Financial Services

SystemsAccountants’ business model is centred on dominating the niche market for financial systems skills in the UK and European regions. As a consequence we provide services across all sectors, private and government; and all sizes of organisation, from SME to MNC.

However during the past 5 years the Financial Services sector has come to be our largest industry sector by client volume. This has led us to develop specialist teams with a focus on these sectors, as the complexity and extended architecture of financial systems environments in banks and insurers often dictates differing needs than those of our clients in Commerce, Industry and the Public Sector.

Insurance Sector Practice

Our Insurance sector practice provides interim consulting & permanent recruitment solutions focused specifically on Insurance & Life sector finance projects. Distinctively we operate in the space between Finance and IT, typically providing Project Managers, Change Agents and Financial Systems specialists who blend robust project consulting & IT delivery know-how with subject matter expertise and qualifications in Actuarial, Finance and Risk.

Our significant experience of mobilising teams for complex finance projects in the Insurance, LP&I and Asset Management sectors provides us with a deep understanding of how to grade project and consulting skills in the context of finance and actuarial change. We have developed a deep appreciation of actuarial modelling systems and tools as well as the extended finance systems architectures of complex insurers, from policy administration and claims through to data warehouses, GL’s, reporting and MI systems.
Our clients include 7 of the top 10 Life Insurers.

Typical assignments could include providing Interim Project/Programme Managers, Design Authorities and BA’s to deliver:

Finance GL Implementation
Finance Process Standardisation / Finance Integration
Data & Systems Specialists specific to regulation incl’ Solvency II & IFRS
Capital Optimisation such as Longevity Hedging, Part VII Scheme Transfers, Credit Reinsurance
Modelling / Risk Software Development / Implementation
Fund Operations Outsource – systems, process & org migration

Case Studies:

Friends Provident is a FTSE 100 Life insurance company. Following the merger of AXA’s UK Life & Pensions business with Friends Provident in 2010 under the ownership of Resolution Plc, we were retained by the CFO and Transformation Director to provide a Programme Director & 16 interim consultants to deliver data & systems, GL integration & OD services across their Integration, Transformation & Solvency II Programmes.

AXA – AXA is ranked as the 9th largest company in the world with global sales of over $175bn. AXA instigated a SAP Finance implementation as an enabler to standardise finance processes across their UK / Ireland business units. The transformation incorporated the creation of an offshore (India) finance shared service centre. SystemsAccountants provided a team of 35 SAP functional, business process re-design, training, testing, data migration and BPR consultants to deliver the build & deployment of the SAP transformation.
Separately we were retained as a resource partner to a major portfolio of finance change – a team of change consultants & project managers were provided to deliver projects around regulatory compliance, Activity Based Management, offshore transition management, group reporting, data warehousing & capital optimisation (Longevity Reinsurance & Part VII’s). Since 2005 we have provided over 100 contractors & permanent staff to AXA globally.

Confidential - Longevity Risk Strategy: Provided a Senior Project Manager to develop the capability for our large Life sector client to reinsure the longevity risk of a multi-billion pound book of pension annuity business. Our Project Manager led the commercial development of the reinsurance agreement with multiple international reinsurers, project managed the due diligence activities, and delivered the required changes to the operational infrastructure to support the arrangement across Finance and Customer Services. The development of the legal contract involved working closely with the client’s Finance Director, Chief Actuary, and Head of Reinsurance Operations to develop a contract and operational capability to support a payment swap deal. The contract development team comprised senior representatives of Finance, Actuarial & Legal teams along with support from a magic circle law firm. The development of operational capability to support the contractual terms was achieved through leading teams of Financial Systems Developers, IT and Customer Services to design, build and test the solution.

Confidential – With Profits Strategy: Appointed a Programme Director & structured team of 15 resources to design and implement a unique and innovative legal scheme enabling the transfer of c £5bn of assets in a With-Profits fund to an alternative investment vehicle backed by a market leading hedging strategy and third party re-insurance agreement. The benefits being a more transparent product range (Variable Annuities) for policyholders & c£150m release of locked-in assets to shareholders. Required major systems build, large and complex actuarial calculations, formal policyholder negotiations. Programme put on hold due to market volatility.

Aviva – The world’s 6th largest insurance group and the largest in the UK. As a preferred niche recruiter for the Group Head Office we have provided over 25 resources to AVIVA over the last few years. These include a discrete team of permanent and contract consultants to support the implementation of an IFRS compliant chart of accounts, a Cartesis group reporting system and a Business Objects MI solution. We have also provided a team of contract business analysts to migrate the finance systems of a newly acquired subsidiary onto the Group’s Oracle platform. Resource provided mixed finance process skills with awareness of Oracle e-Business functionality allowing the re-definition of processes, solution design and off-shoring of transactional finance processes. During 2010 we were retained by the Global Head of IT Delivery to recruit a Head of Data Governance & BI for their Solvency II programme, together with a delivery manager and actuarial systems & risk analysts.

Swiss Re is one of the world’s largest and most diversified reinsurers. Provision of a Project Director, Project Manager and PMO Manager to lead the client side delivery of a new data warehouse and financial close engine. The overall goal of the programme is to develop a common set of integrated systems, tools and processes for Finance and Corporate Actuarial in the Life and Health business. The project scope incorporates a streamed replacement and roll-out of the financial estimation, closing and projections systems and processes and adjusts the timing of Corporate Actuarial reserving and model updates to increase efficiency.

Old Mutual is an international long-term savings, protection and investment group, based in London. It operates in 34 countries and employs 54,000 people. SystemsAccountants recruited a permanent Finance Systems Manager for Old mutual to take ownership of all of their internal Group Reporting & Business Intelligence applications. We have subsequently recruited a small permanent support & projects team to execute ongoing development of their Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) application and associated Hyperion reporting tools

Banking Sector – Finance Systems & Finance Transformation

SystemsAccountants has been providing specialist financial systems recruitment solutions to the Banking Sector for over 10 years. We now have Tier 1 or Preferred Supplier status with 3 of the UK’s top Retail Banks; and maintain a broad client base within Investment Banking, Asset Management, Brokerage, Hedge Fund Management and Private Equity.

The current wave of regulatory change and ongoing competitive pressure is driving ever greater demands for financial and management information; and as a consequence we have witnessed an increasing requirement for Finance Systems specialists who blend, Finance, Risk and Technology disciplines.

Our Banking Sector team focuses on the provision of project specialists who combine business function backgrounds in Finance, combined with skills in Project Management, Change Management, Finance Systems implementation/development and applications support. We have interviewed quite literally thousands of candidates (in person) with hybrid finance and systems skills across the following areas:

Finance Systems / GL’s: SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, CODA, Sun, Agresso, Microgen
Investment Accounting Systems: HiPortfolio, Microgen, FinArch, Sungard Asset Arena
BI: BusinessObjects, TM1, Essbase, OBIEE, SAS, MS SSAS
EPM: Oracle Hyperion EPM, SAP EPM, Cognos, Qlikview, Infor
ETL / EDW: TeraData, Kalido, Ab Initio, Oracle, MS SQL
Regulatory & Compliance: IFRS II, Basel II, Basel III, Sarbanes Oxley

One of our primary value drivers is to provide clients with specialist resources who can put a 'foot in both camps'.

Our network of candidates can understand business issues, enabling them to engage stakeholders with credibility. We have qualified interim consultants and candidates seeking permanent roles across the following job functions and specialisms: