Zurich Financial Services Australia Limited

Zurich Australia Gains Deeper and More Accurate Insights into Business Performance

Zurich Financial Services Group is an insurance-based financial services provider with a global network of subsidiaries and offices. Zurich Financial Services Australia Limited is the only global financial services company operating in the country under a single brand in the areas of general insurance, life risk, investment and superannuation.

Challenge

Zurich had been using spreadsheets for the budgeting, forecasting and planning process across 380 cost centres. Up to 180 managers were involved in the process. Considerable amounts of data needed to be manually consolidated during and at the end of each budget process and review.

The company realised it had to standardise the budgeting processes and streamline financial modelling to reduce inefficiency and produce reports and scenarios within shorter timeframes and with much greater accuracy and collaboration.

In 2008, Zurich began looking for a scalable solution that would be easy to use and provide more precise numbers each month based on actual data.

Increased efficiency

With the implementation of IBM Cognos TM1, Zurich has streamlined the data capture, consolidation and modelling process. This has removed single-point dependencies, reduced the risk of errors and automated journal production, ensuring month-end deadlines can be met and business models reviewed instantly. At the same time, the company has the flexibility to address any issues that may arise under exceptional circumstances.

By minimising the effort required to produce financial scenarios and reports, Zurich is able to make decisions quickly and assess the impact based on facts.

Improved reporting accuracy

The IBM Cognos TM1 system draws a consolidated data layer that supports modelling the production or reports, scorecards and interactive real time business modelling. It removes the inconsistencies brought about by manual data entry processesand significantly Improves the accuracy of financial statements.

Greater business insight

Zurich has enhanced modelling and reporting capabilities across its finance business. The company can now examine monthly profit and loss figures at product level and leverage data in the new monthly profit reports to gain deeper insights into its different business lines.“…processes that took months now take weeks, and those that took weeks now take days. We also have improved visibility and insight…”

Enhanced profit analysis

In addition to streamlining the budget forecasting and planning process, Zurich wanted to expand data consolidation, automation, modelling and ease of use to the most complex part of its business –profit analysis.

Profit analysis involves assessing insurance products across their lifetime and integrating the results with the company’s profit numbers. This process, which can take weeks, also incorporates a combination of actual and estimated results and a series of complex actuarial procedures. Zurich wanted to use actual data for its calculations to improve accuracy and enable real-time business management.

IBM Cognos TM1 has reduced the time it takes to analyse the business from start to finish to less than six days. This process is now completed 12 times a year and intermittently when required using actual data. The system removed the high level of manual processing and detailed calculation processing formerly done by actuaries and freed them to focus on business analysis.