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Finance and Process Transformation

In an industry facing multiple disruptive forces — including technological, regulatory and competitive pressures — rethinking business and financial systems, and how they interconnect, can help insurers reduce costs, report more quickly and derive more business value from their data.

Historically, system and process evolution in insurance has addressed a small number of needs at a time – often in isolation from other business considerations. The narrow focus of many developments has also been compounded by the fact that most insurers have tackled technical issues in similar ways for many years. Widely used approaches such as modelling product-by-product, for example, are always going to reinforce separation and lead to time-consuming repetition across the financial system as a whole.

Many organizations now recognize that effective finance and process transformation solutions will have to involve some updated thinking: considering more far-reaching change and adopting new methods that will have an impact across the business. Changes that previously would focus on simply ‘faster’ or on ‘better’ will now need to encompass all of ‘faster, better and cheaper’ for the process in question, as well as enabling companies to make better use of information in the business more widely.

Finance and Process Transformation

Business executives need good quality information of the right type, in a timely fashion, to make effective decisions.

Why undertake finance and process transformation - the potential benefits

  • Run cost savings - Well designed and fully automated production processes; minimal and easy maintenance; and how you use software will all drive down run cost for reporting frameworks sustainably and release up to 60-70% of the in-house actuarial resources to perform value-creating tasks.
  • Easier IFRS 17 implementation - Too often regulatory change is viewed as another time-consuming, complex and expensive burden. Far-sighted organizations are using this as a catalyst for more fundamental system and process changes that ultimately deliver significant business advantages, as well as making IFRS 17 implementation easier, quicker and cheaper.
  • Faster and more reliable reporting - As system and process evolution has often taken place in a piecemeal fashion, most insurers have become plagued by ‘Excel monsters’, excessive manual processes and dangerous key person risk in reporting. All of this can be corrected with the right processes, systems and workflow automation.
  • Improved in-force management - With the right tools, systems and processes, actuaries and in-force managers have access to the data and analyses that means they can ask the right questions and find the right answers to improve in-force management.
  • Insights into cross-, re- and up-selling potential - Raising the cross-, re- and up-selling potential requires the right data, analyses and actions – which today are too often separated into different organizational siloes.

Approaches to finance and process transformation – how we can help

Keep and adapt existing reporting framework

Piecemeal adaptation of the existing reporting framework has for many years been the traditional approach to finance and process transformation. It is often still viewed by many organizations as the quickest and easiest solution. But in the long run it may not be the cheapest solution or the best solution, as it typically requires significant investment for incremental benefits, and the legacy framework becomes slower and puts greater emphasis on manual housekeeping activities. However, building on past developments in the existing framework is a good approach in the right circumstances. For example, where the framework has been recently designed, rather than evolved over time; has end-to-end automation; utilizes step-wise error handling; etc and so on.

Completely redesign the reporting framework

This is a newer, technology-fueled approach to finance and process transformation. By starting with the end goals in mind, then developing the processes and identifying the latest technologies to achieve these goals, organizations can gain real, long-term advantages, delivering the financial and management information that's really wanted and needed, smarter, quicker and with reduced risk and cost as a result of automation. We have more than 10 years' experience working with clients to deliver tailored, end-to-end, fully automated and governed reporting frameworks. Drawing together our industry expertise and proven technology solutions, we can help you to analyze your requirements; design the process end to end; and implement the new framework.

  • Transforming business processes
  • Avoid a reporting crisis: Useful tips – part 1
  • Avoid a reporting crisis: Useful tips – part 2 (Implementation)
  • Avoid a reporting crisis: Useful tips – part 3 (Cementing gains)
  • Avoid a reporting crisis: Turning words into reality
  • Bite-size IFRS 17: Technology solutions
Rent a ready-to-use, plug-and-play reporting framework

Renting a ready-to-use, plug-and-play reporting framework delivers most of the advantages of a completely redesigned reporting framework, but without the time, cost and potential resource commitments. Willis Towers Watson's 'Financial Reporting & Insights Platform' (FRIP) is designed to ensure it remains future-proof in the long term. In one, single, consistent machine, it can deliver IFRS 17, business planning, local statutory reserving, Solvency II, Swiss Solvency Test, your internal risk model, ALM, and more! The plug-and-play solution requires minimal initial set up and little on-going maintenance. The annual rent covers initial implementation, future regulatory developments and the software license. The cloud usage cost is variable, but typically very low due to the framework design. In addition, the revolutionary design can free up to 60-70% of your actuarial team from routine calculations and manual interventions to perform value-adding tasks instead.

Download
Title File Type File Size
Financial Reporting & Insights Platform - overview PDF 2 MB
  • Video: IFRS 17 implementation can be tough!
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  • Video: Are you getting the data insights you need from your actuaries to create value for your operations?
  • Finance and process transformation: how to find the silver lining in IFRS 17
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