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For all your Automated Document Processing 29
case study ] International
Insurance giant consolidates Achmea, the largest insurance company in the Netherlands, had to tackle some of the challenges facing many other large financial services providers around the world – integration of legacy systems resulting from a series of acquisitions, complex organisational structures with autonomous business units, a huge customer base to service and new global regulatory requirements. Background and challenges Dutch insurance giant Achmea was established through the merger between Interpolis and the previous Achmea, which in turn was formed through mergers of three insurers. The new entity had 22,000 employees serving 4.7 million customers, generating a turnover of c14 billion. Organisationally, the company had six business divisions, with group-wide shared central services, such as IT, group finance and compliance, but through the series of mergers, had inherited a variety of specialist financial services and general business management systems. According to implementation partner IBM Global Business Services, Achmea was finding it difficult to produce accurate accounting information, due to the complex and laborious process involved in extracting data from these multiple systems, hampering group-wide reporting on profitability and inefficiencies. Achmea director of financial services, Rene Colle, describes the difficulties the business faced: “Insurance premium income was handled differently by each unit’s accounting systems, recognised at different points in the payment cycle, or held in a proprietary format. When we came to consolidate group-wide reports we found that in some cases financial calculations such as deduction of commission had already been completed, while in other cases we needed to extract that data too and run the calculation externally. “Accurate month-end closing is essential, so that we can monitor financial performance, meet our regulatory obligations and provide the right figures to customers. It
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