Munich Re: transforming reinsurance

Robert Lempertseder, Head of Financial and Regulatory Reporting at Munich Re talks about how they are transforming reinsurance with the help of SAP Fioneer’s expertise and Financial Products Subledger (FPSL) solution.

Working together, we were able to complete MunichRE’s IFRS17 transformation and harmonize their systems and processes with a combined subledger across all of their businesses.

“The understanding of the insurance business model was particularly important in the IFRS17 introduction, and this is certainly where we feel that SAP Fioneer can bring a lot of value to the table, being very specialized in the financial services industry.”

— Robert Lempertseder, Munich Re

Transcript:

Insurance is a very special topic also in the financial services industry and therefore it is important to have people knowledgeable of that industry and its products.

My name is Robert Lempertseder. I’m working for Munich Reinsurance and I’m heading the financial and regulatory reporting. IFRS17 is a huge transformation for our industry.

If you think about the goals of the introduction of IFRS17, it is to provide a lot of transparency about our insurance business to analysts, to investors.

For us, quite a paradigm shift and also quite a significant transformation program.

During the program we worked intensely with SAP Fioneer. We also had a combined steering committee where they SAP Fioneer executives were on the steering committee in order to create the transparency on the progress of our programme, but also to have those educated discussions about where the product should develop and improve.

For us it was quite a natural expansion to use the FPSL, the Financial Products Subledger system.

And this is really for us a paradigm shift because it’s the first time for us as a group that we have one combined subledger across all of our businesses, be primary or reinsurance.
With the centralization comes also higher quality in our view.

We were able, during our program, to harmonize not just the system but also the processes around that.

If you understand the complexities of the IFRS17, of course efficiency is a huge part to be fast, close, ready for the future.

I think the understanding of the insurance business model was particularly important in the IFRS17 introduction, and this is certainly something where we feel that SAP Fioneer can bring a lot of value to the table, being very specialized in the financial services industry.

We actually have transferred our applications into the cloud and it certainly provides us with a lot of efficiency.

We know if we have the necessity to scale up, we can always do so. We can do so quickly. And this is a key aspect for us to use the cloud.