The insurance industry is going through significant change in several ways. Technology is unlocking new and efficient ways of operating and conducting business. New accounting standards require Zurich to adapt its finance landscape to prepare for and adopt them.

Zurich works relentlessly to exceed customer expectations, combining the intelligence they have and the information they collect to anticipate and be ready for the evolving marketplace.

Migrating to a new ERP platform is a significant undertaking that often takes years. Yet organizations still need to maintain control and compliance during this transformation period, and increasing efficiency is key to managing cost. This is especially the case for organizations facing new regulatory changes, such as new accounting pronouncements.

Insurance organizations reporting under IFRS must adopt IFRS17, the new international financial reporting standard for insurance contracts, by January 2023. For Zurich North America, this meant a need for parallel ledgers and parallel reporting during the transition and preparation for IFRS17 and prompted the decision to move from a legacy SAP environment to SAP S/4HANA.

“We needed to be able to manage in a multi-ledger environment for 170 entities across as many as four different accounting principles in our SAP S/4HANA system,” says Doug Tramp, CPA, CGMA, director of finance systems and operational change at Zurich North America. “We realized the regulatory environment was changing, and it was going to create more work in the long term unless we updated our technology.”

Despite the extensive capabilities and benefits of SAP S/4HANA, Tramp estimated that the move to parallel ledgers would significantly increase accounting staff workload in some areas for a period of time. In addition, moving between systems would require a tremendous amount of manual work, as the team tried to maintain compliance, control, and visibility of all records.

Zurich is constantly challenging the status quo and searching for innovative ways to gain efficiencies without compromising accuracy or compliance. In the search for a solution, the company engaged a third-party consultant and also reached out to other organizations going through the same transition or in a similar situation.

“None of the suggested solutions were acceptable on our end,” says Tramp. “Each option still increased either the work or maintenance required of our accounting workforce for the foreseeable future. I kept thinking there had to be a better way.”

Zurich had implemented several BlackLine solutions in 2011 to manage the financial close around the globe, while addressing regional requirements. With its initial implementation of BlackLine, Zurich North America was able to strengthen controls and improve visibility across the 170 entities that exist in its environment.

“Before BlackLine, account reconciliations were a very cumbersome process,” says Tramp. “BlackLine definitely helped us improve our controls, not just with reconciliations, but also in the whole close management process. We thought it could help us do the same during the move to SAP S/4HANA.”

Because BlackLine was already a trusted, user-friendly, and agile solution for Zurich, leadership supported the decision to use additional BlackLine functionality to support the ERP transition, along with other use cases.

During the transition to SAP S/4HANA, Zurich North America used BlackLine as a control center and automation solution to reduce staff workload. With the assistance of advisors at BlackLine, Tramp and his team were able to map legacy account structures to the new, creating consistency and maintaining history—including policies and procedures—across systems.