How ICEA LION launched 6× faster without rebuilding actuarial logic
ICEA LION is one of the largest insurance and financial services groups in East Africa, serving a fast-moving market where speed to launch and channel responsiveness are real competitive levers. Their actuarial team built sophisticated Excel models they trusted — but the bottleneck wasn’t pricing capability. It was production. Getting models into the administration system meant translation work, limited IT bandwidth, and long build-and-validate cycles that stretched launches beyond what the business needed.
With Coherent, ICEA LION moved from “recode and re-test” to “deploy and iterate.” By turning existing actuarial logic into API-powered services — and testing changes faster with better evidence — the team shortened deployment timelines from a year to roughly two months, freed up capacity to focus on broader product delivery, and helped the business commercialize faster across channels.
Reduced deployment cycles from ~1 year to ~2 months
More testing variation, faster with retained evidence
700k+ API calls in a single month proving enterprise-ready scale
More product capacity + confidence without adding headcount
The Challenge
Speed was the goal. Rebuilds were the constraint.
ICEA LION’s pricing and quotation logic lived where actuarial teams do their best work: Excel. But production lived somewhere else. Each launch meant rebuilding or translating actuarial intent inside the administration system — a process constrained by IT bandwidth and slowed further by iterative back-and-forth just to validate that the coded implementation matched the original model.
To keep things moving, teams leaned on workarounds like static rate tables and macro-coded spreadsheets. But tables had to be simplified to fit system constraints, which created new problems: interpolation between rates, “jumps” between bands, and repeated recalculations every time products evolved or new variations emerged. It made accurate, flexible quoting harder — even when the underlying model was strong.
Distribution compounded the issue. Quotations shared with bank assurance partners often lived as spreadsheets outside the team’s control, making updates difficult to manage and even harder to recall when changes were needed. ICEA LION didn’t need a new modeling approach. They needed a faster, more controlled way to deploy what actuarial already trusted — and stop spending the team’s time on translation and rework.
Our Solution
Deploy actuarial models to production exactly as built.
ICEA LION adopted Coherent Spark to make Excel-based actuarial logic production-ready without rebuilding it from first principles inside the administration system. Instead of recoding or compressing models into static tables, the team deployed existing pricing and quotation logic as API-powered services that downstream systems and partners could call directly.
This changed the operating model for product delivery. Updates became controlled model releases — not multi-month IT projects. Testing also became faster and more scalable: Spark’s Testing Center made it easier to run more variations, generate systematic or randomized cases, and retain evidence to support review and audit expectations.
The result wasn’t just speed. It was capacity. With less time spent on rebuild cycles and back-and-forth validation, the actuarial team could focus more of its effort on what actually drives better product outcomes: scenario testing, refinement of assumptions, supporting the business with faster turnarounds, and bringing more requests across the finish line with confidence.
“Coherent changed product deployment from an IT rebuild into an actuarial-owned release. What used to take us a year can now take a couple months—and we can test more, iterate faster, and get products to market with real confidence.”
- Anthony Muturi, FSA, MAAA, Group Actuary, ICEA LION
Our Impact
More time back. More products shipped.
More confidence in delivery.
ICEA LION didn’t just speed up deployment — they removed a recurring drag on actuarial capacity. By cutting translation effort, reducing IT dependency, and accelerating testing, the team freed up time to concentrate on other parts of product delivery and respond faster to business demand.
Cut deployment time from a year to ~2 months
Work that previously took “a little bit of a year” could be completed in roughly two months, moving launches from long build cycles to controlled model releases.
Freed up actuarial capacity for higher-value product work
With fewer rebuild loops and less back-and-forth validation, the team could handle more product requests, run more scenario testing, and support the business with faster turnarounds.
Improved testing speed and audit-ready evidence
Testing became more efficient and expansive — enabling more test variations at greater speed while retaining evidence that supports review and audit expectations.
Faster commercialization across channels
Shorter deployment timelines meant products could launch sooner — giving the business more runway to sell, learn, and build a path to growth earlier.
Launch actuarial-driven
products at business speed.
Turn trusted Excel models into governed, production-ready services — so your team can ship changes in weeks, expand testing, and support the business with confident timelines.