SAP subledger solution on SAP S/4HANA® platform was launched in January 2019 to accommodate banks, insurance, and financial technology (fintech) companies’ increasingly complex regulatory and reporting environment.
SAP has announced another joint project with Swiss Re Insurance Company Ltd., a global reinsurance company headquartered in Zurich, to drive finance transformation through a comprehensive SAP subledger solution. The new features’ reporting capabilities are designed to help financial organisations meet upcoming accounting standards, streamline accounting flows and increase transparency and control.
In September 2019, SAP has expanded its joint co-innovation initiative with Swiss Re through software that goes beyond accounting to include simulation, forecasting and planning capabilities essential in supporting businesses’ financial analysis.
Today, the two global companies are venturing in a co-innovation project to drive the customer-centric SAP S/4HANA solution for financial products subledger, a comprehensive subledger for banks, insurance and reinsurance companies, and fintech companies. The solution runs on a highly simplified core and is designed for massive data volumes. Through the combined financial accounting and planning solution, multiple reconciled valuations for financial products are now achievable.
Swiss Re Re Insurance CFO Gerhard Lohmann said:
“Since announcing our partnership in 2017, SAP and Swiss Re set out to develop a solution that addresses the increasingly complex demands related to financial steering and reporting of insurance companies from regulators across the globe.”
“The successful completion of the subledger co-innovation marks an important milestone in our long-term digital transformation strategy. With regulations constantly evolving, these innovations are important to help companies easily adapt to new regulatory and accounting standards,” Lohmann added.
The solution highlights the following capabilities:
• Subledger for financial instruments and insurance contracts
• Integration with general ledger in SAP S/4HANA
• Comprehensive accounting functionality
• Data volume management for optimised performance and scalability
• Templates for U.S. and international standards
After the release of the extensive new capabilities in SAP S/4HANA 1909, additional functionality and reporting content for accountants and actuaries are made possible in this product iteration. Hence, an improvement in the continuous closing process is foreseen. The solution’s enhanced functionality gives equal focus on insurance contracts and financial instruments as they are accounted for by the financial products subledger solution resulting in increased efficiency.
Luka Mucic, SAP CFO and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, expressed that the German software giant is bringing the subledger solution to a broader user group and that more projects are to be expected. He further said:
“We have seen enormous interest in the solution. Our customer base has rapidly expanded to 39 in the first year, and hundreds of entities signed up for it. The solution is designed for the complex regulatory and reporting requirements that insurance firms, banks, fintech companies, and financial corporations are facing today. The combination of financial accounting and planning functionality helps the industry prepare for the upcoming accounting standards, such as IFRS 17 and long duration targeted improvements (LDTI).”
SAP Subledger Solution Benefits
The gap between transactional systems and finance applications are anticipated to be resolved by the integrated subledger solution for financial instruments and insurance contracts that centralises all accounting rules. The solution will enable a company to:
• Acquire instant financial insights at any level of detail, including drill-down capabilities that facilitate timely, relevant decisions
• Reduce IT complexity by centralizing all accounting logic in one intuitive rules engine, and streamline the accounting process using a structured model
• Gain full data lineage transparency over accounting processes with GL-balance substantiation based on instrument-level detail
• Accelerate implementation and adapt to changing regulations by using pre-configured content and leveraging extensibility by design
• Simplify the reporting process and vastly accelerate reporting cycles – all while empowering business users to define their own reports and access data in real-time
