12 November 2009

Generali Germany works closely with SunGard to keep its system updated to comply with new regulatory requirements.

Generali Germany is the holding group for a number of German insurance companies, such as AachenMünchener, Generali, Cosmos, Central and Dialog, making it the third largest insurance group based in Germany and the second-largest life insurance group. A long-term user of SunGard’s enterprise-wide actuarial modelling system iWorks Prophet, Generali Germany works closely with SunGard to keep its system updated to comply with new regulatory requirements.

Generali Germany originally installed iWorks Prophet back in 1999 to cater for its life, health and pensions business’ asset liability modelling. Using the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform and Windows HPC Server, the system helps insurance and other financial services companies to meet their reporting responsibilities and improve risk management. In 2003, the company embarked on a centralisation strategy to consolidate the activities of its various businesses. Part of this project involved standardising the use of Prophet on a global basis throughout all of Generali Germany’s companies, and creating a direct link to Prophet and the various operational systems to collect data.

“We have gained a significant advantage through the standardisation process,” says Hrabovszki. The reporting requirements of the International Financial Reporting Standards regulation mean that life insurers have to compile their financial reports on a more regular and comprehensive, company-wide basis. The standardised use of Prophet throughout Generali Germany’s network has helped us meet these demands.”

As one of the biggest users of Prophet in Germany and German-speaking regions, Generali Germany has been able to work particularly closely with SunGard in developing new capabilities within the system. Such developments as iWorks Prophet’s new Asset Liability Strategy (ALS) library are allowing the company to go from strength to strength. “ALS is a large change that will make our asset liability modelling faster and more sophisticated in its calculations,” says Hrabovszki. “Through our partnership with SunGard, we feel that we are able to state exactly what we want from the system.”

Furthermore, Generali Germany has created a Prophet module for advanced profit testing calculations, which can be run deterministically or stochastically. These calculations are carried out across the Generali Germany companies by using the same process and the same actuarial methodology. The development of extra functions such as this have not only helped Generali Germany, but ensure that Prophet is now better placed to meet the ever-changing compliance requirements of the life insurance sector.
“Our relationship with SunGard means that Generali Germany will have a lot of future benefits from Prophet,” says Hrabovszki.“ It is faster, more robust, flexible, standardised and able to be controlled from head office. It has proved to be a very successful investment.”

This article first appeared in the 2009/10 edition of the Finance on Windows Partner Guide.

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