A case study for a growing insurer explored how it was able to cut $750,000 from accounting and other reporting expenses by decommissioning three local reporting platforms.

The company made further gains as staff resources previously allocated to manually producing accounts and performing intercompany reconciliations were reassigned to other analytical functions, providing added value to the organisation.

It comes from a company historically involved in solving problems for insurers that today are the subject of the insurtech revolution and digital transformation in Bermuda and elsewhere.

The case study was supplied by Phinsys, a finance automation software provider for the insurance sector, which has just recently signed Ariel Re for the utilisation of the Phinsys suite of finance and accounting products to streamline operational and financial processes, and to automate statutory, regulatory and management reporting.

Legacy systems, disparate data sources and manual processing are common problems for insurance companies. Digital transformation of financial data and reporting is therefore considered critical as such businesses target expense reduction as a strategic priority.

As the demand for digitised and automated finance and accounting processes gathers pace across the insurance industry, Phinsys now acts for more than a dozen insurers with operations on the island.

Gavin Bishop, the chief operating officer of Ariel Re, said: “As we increase our capacity and expand our client offerings, the ability to smoothly integrate and process key data quickly and cost-effectively is critical to supporting our scalability.

“Legacy systems and manual processes can be cumbersome when looking to ensure a rapid, accurate financial close process and perpetuate the need for additional time spent and controls that can be avoided with integrated data flows. Phinsys is providing us with solutions that will further our vision of being the premier manager of reinsurance risk.”

Eric Butler, director, Americas and Bermuda, of Phinsys, added: “The Ariel Re teams faced many of the common problems experienced by the other insurance businesses we deal with. We’re delighted to be working with Gavin and his team and helping them achieve greater efficiency and control of their data and reporting.”

Phinsys Product Suite solutions enable insurance companies, agencies, brokers and MGAs to conform data from multiple disparate systems into a single, scalable finance data warehouse and automatically reconcile and post accounting entries to their general ledger.

The accuracy and transparency of accounting processes, such as those dealing with premium earnings, expense allocations, ceded premium allocations and the planning and forecasting of results are also improved, together with automated regulatory and management reports that enable insurance businesses to better understand where to invest their time and money.

System benefits also include:

• Reduced reporting periods for Market Data Collections (Lloyd’s) returns, Solvency 2 Pillar 3, International Financial Reporting Standards, and UK/US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles figures from 20 to five days

• Eight-five per cent effort reduction for regulatory reporting after close of statutory books and no time-lag between management and regulatory reports

• Automated and accelerated financial close processing, reducing closing cycles by five days

• Automated processing of premium calculations, expense allocation and business forecasting reduced from two weeks to one to two days per month with fewer people needed

• Accelerated reconciliations saving three to five days reporting effort per quarter

Ian Jones, of Phynsis, said: “The Phinsys platform is software-led with 90 per cent out-of-the-box functionality that is then configurable for each client’s needs.

“Our main competition involves the big consultancies who are typically building highly customised solutions at considerable cost and over long periods.

“Many of our implementations have been achieved within six months at significantly lower cost.”

Phinsys was established in Britain in 2011 and has been active in Bermuda over the past three to four years, typically working with Bermudian parents of Lloyd’s syndicates or specialty insurers Phinsys works with in London.