5 data challenges in finance modernization that only industry-specific platforms can solve

In banking and insurance, finance modernization rises or falls on one thing: trusted, timely and interconnected data (and the controls and standardized processes applied to it).

Horizontal tools weren’t built for the daily realities of banks and insurers. Interdependent accounting–risk–actuarial flows, instrument-level granularity, regulatory lineage and G-SIB-scale volumes managed with industry-agnostic tools result in manual reconciliations, late closes and reports and inconsistent insights.

Only an industry-specific platform turns financial data into a single, controlled source of truth that can power automation, AI and regulatory reporting every day.

This post outlines five data challenges that generic solutions miss, and how SAP Fioneer’s platform addresses each to deliver efficiency, compliance and resilience for future demands.

1. Daily operative data production is inherently complex and domain-specific

Day to day, banks and insurers operate with a level of complexity unmatched by most industries that are difficult to manage with industry-agnostic platforms.

Instead of a monthly or quarterly cadence, banks and insurers require daily financial accuracy because positions change constantly. Loans are issued, deposits move, premiums are booked, claims are reported and market values change. All of this must be captured, processed and reported with precision across accounting, risk, actuarial and treasury domains.

Yet generic platforms treat ingestion, processing and reporting as siloed steps. They don’t support the recalculations required when positions or assumptions shift across domains. Nor do they manage the interdependencies between accounting, actuarial models and risk management frameworks. As a result, they cannot deliver the accurate, daily view of financial truth that financial institutions require without time-consuming manual interventions.

An industry-specific platform like SAP Fioneer operates more like an assembly line for data for both banks and insurers, where hundreds of upstream systems send daily inputs into a structured pipeline. Each domain—accounting, credit risk, liquidity, ESG and actuarial—processes the same data in parallel, contributing interdependent outputs that flow back into a single reconciled view. This output supports financial close, risk KPIs, reserving and performance reporting from a common source of truth.

A disciplined flow replaces fragmented, manual workarounds with standardized processes that reduce effort, enforce controls and improve compliance.

2. Bank and insurance finance requires multi-domain, multi-directional integration

Generic tools do not recognize banking- or insurance-specific instruments. Nor can they manage interdependent KPIs across different domains. For example, institutions need toknow the relationship between finance and risk KPIs, such as:

• The probability of default feeds into expected loss calculations within accounting in banking
• In insurance, actuarial models and claims reserves inform financial results and regulatory capital metrics
• Book values generated by accounting inform capital adequacy, solvency ratios and liquidity positions.
• Treasury and investment data drive asset-liability management and exposure tracking

For CROs, this visibility ensures that risk figures align directly with finance. For actuaries, it ensures that liability models feed into consistent finance and risk outputs.

But, without domain-aware orchestration, banks and insurers are left with fragmented systems and manual reconciliations. Industry agnostic tools may provide historical visibility, but they cannot support the continuous, bi-directional data flows needed for real-time operations or decisioning.

SAP Fioneer’s Finance Platform is built to support these interdependencies with a demand-driven architecture that ensures domains update shared data continuously.

A central data layer, which is available for banking institutions, serves as a single repository for integrating, harmonizing and distributing a holistic data set across finance, risk, actuarial, management accounting and disclosure. It is centered on core elements, such as financial instruments, contracts and positions.

Real-time data exchange is orchestrated via the platform’s ETL layer (FOF). It allows, for example, risk or actuarial adjustments to flow back into accounting.

The result is a controlled data environment where interdependent KPIs remain consistent across domains, ensuring efficiency in daily operations and regulatory readiness without last-minute reconciliations.

3. Standardization drives data consistency, which AI, automation and analytics rely on

“There’s a certain bank and insurance mindset: if we calculate everything in separate systems and just collect the results centrally, we can clean it up afterward. But if the underlying data is inconsistent or wrong, no amount of consolidation can fix it.” — Daniel Pehnec, SAP Fioneer Senior Solutions Manager

Banks and insurers without standardization feed disparate data into lakes, then attempt to reconcile inconsistencies after the fact. This approach is slow, expensive and unreliable.

But standardization is essential. Without it, financial institutions cannot deploy AI, build trusted forecasts or deliver timely analytics. SAP Fioneer standardizes data across the platform via separate components that work together as one:

• The data model via Financial Services Data Management (FSDM), which is specific to banking

• The accounting logic via the Financial Product Subledger (FPSL)

• The data processing flows via the Finance Data Suite made up of the Finance Consumption Layer (FCL), Financial Services Data Quality (FSDQ) and Finance Open Integration Framework (FOF)

For AI to function effectively, it requires structured, timely and high-integrity data. It cannot infer correct values from bad inputs, such as an inaccurate loan status in banking or a misclassified policy event in insurance. SAP Fioneer ensures a clean, consistent data production process that AI can use for analysis, forecasting and controls, ranging from loss prediction and variance analysis to claims automation and provision modeling.

Standardization enforces better processes and controls at every stage, making efficiency gains sustainable and ensuring compliance as institutions adopt AI and automation.

4. Built for scalability across entity structures and time zones

Generic platforms were not built to scale across large, distributed organizations. For example, a G-SIB can have more than 200 source systems, operate in seven time zones and generate over 300 KPIs daily. This requires a high-frequency, multi-threaded computation engine.

But industry-agnostic solutions cannot process billions of daily records or calculate interdependent KPIs under tight reporting timelines that a G-SIB like that requires.

Horizontal tools also struggle with the high data volumes and regulatory complexity seen in banking and insurance, from daily trading and cash movement to large-scale policy administration, claims processing and actuarial recalculations across legal entities. Without embedded domain logic and performance-ready architecture, these platforms fall short on efficiency, compliance and responsiveness.

SAP Fioneer addresses these demands through a scalable architecture and a process model designed to handle high data volumes, frequent updates and complex organizational structures. It supports branch-level consolidation, regulatory-specific adjustments and consistent processing across global entities like London and Switzerland, enabling aligned balance sheet snapshots and compliance metrics across time zones.

Scalability paired with standardized controls allows CFOs to manage complexity efficiently while maintaining compliance across jurisdictions, so they’re ready for future changes.

5. A platform strategy that enables future innovation

Many banks and insurers initially focus on symptoms, such as slow closing, manual reconciliations or fragmented reporting. But solving these issues in isolation only provides temporary relief.

Real modernization happens when the data foundation is addressed. That’s why SAP Fioneer begins with architecture, not just application replacement.

SAP Fioneer allows banks and insurers to start modernization where the pain is most acute—often in accounting, data management, or integration with actuarial and regulatory systems—and scale from there:

• FPSL modernizes core finance processes
• FSDM provides unified data governance (for banks only)
• FCL and FSDQ establish operational trust

By building on a standardized, industry-specific foundation with better data, stronger controls and standardized processes, the finance platform enables scalable, phased modernization that addresses immediate needs while ensuring efficiency, compliance and future readiness.

Modernization that’s efficient, compliant and built for what’s next

Banks and insurers need a finance platform with embedded industry logic and SAP-native integration to standardize data, automate controls and scale daily operations with full lineage.

SAP Fioneer provides the automation, intelligence and scalability to run finance efficiently, remain compliant and stay future-ready across multiple domain requirements.

Explore the SAP Fioneer Finance Platform for Banking & Insurance. Book a demo or talk to our specialists today.