Useful charts for business/data analysis in Excel 2016

by pjlee01February 5, 2018June 13, 2022Leave a comment

(Posted by Patrick Lee on 10 August 2017 at a different location, but migrated here on 05 Feb 2018).

You may not know that Excel 2016 added some useful new charts for analysing data. I particularly like the Treemap, Box & Whisker and Pareto charts. (The images below are taken from this Microsoft post, please see that link for more detail on these and other charts).

The Treemap gives you a quick view of which categories are most significant:

A (UK) Pensions Data Format Standard – let’s make it happen!

by pjlee01February 5, 2018June 13, 20221 Comment

(Posted by Patrick Lee on 8 August 2017 at a different location, but migrated here on 05 Feb 2018).

I have long thought it would be useful for there to be a standard format for exchange of data files for DB (Defined Benefit, i.e. final salary or career average revalued) pension plans, at least in the UK initially.

This would make it easier for pension plans to share information (with actuarial consultants, but also other advisers e.g. buyout companies, investment analysts), not just in mergers and acquisitions, but also in risk transfers (longevity, or pensions buyouts) and would improve the comparability of analysis across companies by investors etc. It should also reduce costs for trustees and plan sponsors, and may increase the quality of the data held.

How corporate pension liabilities could vary by 10% or more, even on an agreed set of assumptions

by pjlee01February 5, 2018June 13, 20221 Comment

(Posted by Patrick Lee on 1 August 2017 at a different location, but migrated here on 05 Feb 2018).

Why is there a range of answers, even using a given set of assumptions? Are these differences real, or artificial?

It would clearly make a difference whether a company’s pension liabilities were £475m, £500m or £525m …

The value of an organisation’s defined benefit (final salary or CARE – career average revalued) pension plan promises normally depends on many uncertainties, including:

how long the plan members and their partners are expected to live
what proportions of active members will leave service, or retire on ill health, before reaching normal retirement age
what the future rates of salary growth and price inflation (and hence pension increases) will be
assuming that a perfectly matching asset portfolio can’t be found (normally such a portfolio doesn’t exist), then what the future rates of reinvestment (for cashflow mismatches) will be.

WebPocketMoney.com: an easy way to track your children’s pocket money balances online, with a natural “Tell me” user interface.

by pjlee01February 5, 2018June 13, 20222 Comments

WebPocketMoney 1.0 released!

(Posted by Patrick Lee on 6 May 2017 at a different location, but migrated here on 05 Feb 2018).

We are delighted to announce the release earlier this week of WebPocketMoney.com, our cloud based app that enables parents and their children to track and manage pocket money online.

A new, sophisticated online tool for parents and children to track and manage pocket money balances

This web app has been designed to help parents and children manage pocket money in a user-friendly way that encourages saving. It uses notional accounts rather than physical accounts (which are often difficult to create for children) and this has the advantage that you can offer your children much higher interest rates (e.g. 5% or 10% per month) than are commonly available in the real world, in order to encourage them to save.

Migrating to the cloud (Microsoft Azure and Office 365)

by pjlee01February 5, 2018June 18, 20221 Comment

(Posted by Patrick Lee on 22 Apr 2016 at a different location, but migrated here on 05 Feb 2018).

I thought I’d share a few thoughts from our experience of moving from Windows servers on which both our corporate and client websites and email were stored to the cloud, specifically Office 365 and Microsoft Azure.

The process itself was relatively painless (particularly for migrating email to Office 365). The only problems we experienced were in migrating some older websites, and some web-based software which, for reasons best known to its manufacturer (whose blushes I will spare by not naming here), needed to be installed as a desktop program (albeit one with a web interface). Both of these needed to be installed on a virtual machine (a windows server within the cloud) rather than as stand alone web apps (or app services as they are now known) in Azure. We also had a few teething problems moving some databases from SQL Server 2012 or 2014 to SQLAzure, but found solutions to these after a bit of experimentation.