Enabling Effective and Impactful Insurance Processes

The enterprise technology magazine CIO Review has recognized SAP Fioneer as one of the 20 most promising insurance technology solution providers. In his interview with the magazine, Patrick Schmid, Head of Transformation & Fioneer 2025 and Head of Business Unit Insurance Verticals, talks about the evolution of SAP Fioneer and ongoing co-innovation projects. He speaks about our products helping insurers navigate the complexities brought by regulatory mandates, and explains how we help our customers transform their business in a cost-efficient way.

Over the last 18 months, the business landscape as a whole experienced the far-reaching disruptions caused by the pandemic. The period witnessed a meteoric rise in digitalization and cloud adoption in the insurance arena as insurers wanted to quickly adapt to the newer cash flow structures driven by implementing new and more sophisticated systems. At the same time, the emergence of more stringent regulatory mandates such as the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 17 and the requirement for Long-Duration Targeted Improvements (LDTI) is further increasing the complexities insurers have to face while performing their day-to-day tasks. Another key trend in the insurance arena is the skyrocketing customer demand for highly sophisticated, intuitive, and personalized user experiences instead of the traditional paper-based processes.

In light of this, the insurance sector is seeking partners that can assist them to effectively consolidate their ever-evolving datasets in an efficient manner, demystify the regulatory complexities, and digitalize their processes in lockstep with customer behavior. And as most InsurTech or insurance services companies cater to a part of this overall need, a majority of insurers invest significant resources to gain a 360° visibility and control of their operations.

As an alternative to this cost-intensive approach, Germany-based SAP Fioneer offers its one-stop software platform that combines SAP’s proven technology with a focus on accelerated innovation in banking and insurance, and deliver end-to-end solutions for insurers. The company’s comprehensive suite of products and services helps insurance firms pursue new digital business models while enhancing and safeguarding their clients’ health, property, and business. “Our portfolio enables our customers to innovate and transform their business by meeting the needs for digital innovation and cost efficiency in financial services,” says Patrick Schmid, Head of Transformation & Fioneer 2025 and Head of Business Unit Insurance Verticals at SAP Fioneer.

The genesis of SAP Fioneer was sparked by global software provider SAP when they recognized that the financial services the industry is in need of solutions specific to its sector in order to successfully solve today’s pressing challenges. To help their customers meet the ever-changing demands of the industry, the software giant formed a strategic partnership with investment company DEDIQ and started SAP Fioneer. “With SAP Fioneer, SAP made a strategic leap to even better mitigate the challenges faced by banks and insurance firms,” states Schmid. As an organization, SAP Fioneer was launched on September 1st, 2021, with a vision to become a leading provider of financial services software, solutions, and platform that can enable its clients to innovate and transform their businesses.

“From the outside, we are a company backed with SAP’s reliable and trusted technology while on the inside, we are a start-up that is hungry to make impactful changes in the financial services market.”

Patrick Schmid, Head of Business Unit Insurance Verticals

SAP Fioneer’s offerings include its finance and core insurance products. The insurance finance platform is geared to aid its clients in effectively adapting to the changes in accounting regulations on a daily basis, thereby eliminating the compliance complexities and equipping them for the imminent IFRS 17 requirements. On the other hand, the company’s digital and core insurance product portfolio comprises various solutions with functionalities such as advanced policy, product, quotation, underwriting, claims, billing, as well as incentive and commission management functionalities for insurers, helping them improve their efficiency and customer loyalty.

At the heart of SAP Fioneer is a highly customer-centric culture, which the company blends with its banking and insurance-driven digital business innovation, cloud technology, and solutions to enable its clients in meeting their speed, scalability, and cost-efficiency needs. “From the outside, we are a company backed with SAP’s reliable and trusted technology while on the inside, we are a start-up that is hungry to make impactful changes in the financial services market,” adds Schmid. At the same time, the company’s start-up with a comprehensive portfolio and resource-backed nature makes it a hub for highly competent professionals from the realms of banking, insurance, and technology. As a result, SAP Fioneer, even in its three-month-long journey has already made an impact in the way its clients operate and deliver their services.

Looking ahead, SAP Fioneer plans to expand the capabilities of its portfolio by working with co-innovation partners on co-innovation projects. “Co-innovation projects allow us to eliminate a lot of the trial and error that usually happens in a lab because when working in collaboration, we get to consider real-world scenarios while developing feature-sets for an upcoming product,” explains Schmid. In pursuit of this, the company has already started a co-innovation project to develop an innovative commercial lending solution. On the M&A front, SAP Fioneer acquired Hedwell—a software engineering company specializing in insurance IT consultation.

With such unmatched core competencies powering its solutions and services, SAP Fioneer is perfectly poised to become one of the go-to names of the banking and insurance services space in the coming years.

This article was published on the December issue of the CIO Review. You can view the full magazine here.

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