UNIQA Insurance Group
Client story
Investments are now uniformly managed across the entire UNIQA insurance group
UNIQA is one of the largest insurance groups in its core markets of Austria and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) with approximately 40 subsidiaries in 18 countries serving about 15.5 million customers. With further expansion planned in the region there was a growing need to manage bonds, funds, shares and derivatives in one system, creating the single source of truth for the entire group.
UNIQA first implemented SimCorp Dimension in 2004, initially for their Austrian business. Later, it was rolled out across eight of the 18 countries UNIQA is currently operating in.
Expanding the usage of SimCorp Dimension across 10 countries in less than 10 months
Before that 10 countries of the group were using different systems for managing their assets with countless interfaces and enormous manual effort to consolidate the investments across the group. Having already centralized a lot of their investment processes and executed tasks centrally, it was the next logical move to expand the strategy and onboard additional subsidiaries within the group.
In June 2019, it was decided to keep enhancing and rolling out the platform to the remaining countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Serbia, the Ukraine and Kosovo. The rollout of SimCorp Dimension started in June 2019 and continued until April 2020. It took on average only one month per country for implementation. The complex rollout included the analysis of the local accounting and regulatory reporting rules per country, technical implementation, development of interfaces, training, testing, data migration and go-live.
There were numerous challenges identified at the start of the rollout process. The operating team had to align and coordinate 10 countries almost in parallel while taking into consideration that all 10 countries used different systems, different approaches, and languages. Six employees from UNIQA’s Investment Accounting department formed the core team together with around 30 colleagues from other business units such as IT, Risk Management and UNIQA Capital Markets, supported by three SimCorp consultants.
“The rollout is an important milestone for UNIQA, enabling us to accelerate reporting process across the entire group through efficient automatization of processes and workflows.”
Switching to a remote project delivery
Since the project was rolled out in parallel across 10 countries there were special considerations regarding labor hours and travel between the locations.
As a result, several trainings and specific local GAAP implementations that normally would have been held onsite could not happen. SimCorp was instantly ready to deliver remotely. All on-site meetings were successfully and swiftly substituted by comprehensive online trainings and video calls. The entire project team maintained a sharp focus to keep the project on track while transitioning to a virtual delivery.
All assets of UNIQA group are now on SimCorp Dimension’s IBOR
UNIQA successfully rolled out and implemented a major part of SimCorp Dimension across their back office and middle office. As a result of the 10-month rollout more than 1,350 investment positions with more than 50,000 accounting and risk attributes were moved to SimCorp Dimension. This gives UNIQA a single source of truth for their investment operations.
Up to six weeks waiting time successfully replaced by instant access to groupwide view on assets
Before the rollout, the individual units had to send excel templates and reports to UNIQA’s headquarters where the data would then be manually entered into the target systems. Today, after the successful implementation of SimCorp Dimension, every purchase of a financial instrument, like a bond, automatically generates an update according to the respective local and international accounting regulations and is included in the group risk reports. Moreover, all investment data that was previously sent to UNIQA’s headquarters monthly, is now automatically available across the group for daily and ad-hoc analyses. This not only saves time due to eliminating the need of constant reconciliation, but also assures the quality of imported data.
Meanwhile UNIQA is using the system across the entire company, which means that all assets of the entire UNIQA group are live on SimCorp Dimension’s IBOR. Since 2020, SimCorp Dimension is a golden standard across the whole group for investment management.
“The finance community is now speaking one common language across the whole UNIQA Group. SimCorp is now our single source of truth.”
Switching to a remote project delivery
Since the project was rolled out in parallel across 10 countries there were special considerations regarding labor hours and travel between the locations.
As a result, several trainings and specific local GAAP implementations that normally would have been held onsite could not happen. SimCorp was instantly ready to deliver remotely. All on-site meetings were successfully and swiftly substituted by comprehensive online trainings and video calls. The entire project team maintained a sharp focus to keep the project on track while transitioning to a virtual delivery.
About UNIQA Group
The UNIQA Group is one of the leading insurance groups for its core markets of Austria and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Around 21,300 employees and exclusive sales partners serve around 15.5 million customers in 18 countries. UNIQA is the second-largest insurance group in Austria with a market share of more than 21 per cent. UNIQA operates in 15 markets in the CEE growth region: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine. The UNIQA Group also includes insurance companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
Quick Facts
AUM: EUR 28,728 million
Insurance Contracts: 20,923,632
Headquarters: Vienna
Employees: 13,038
Website: www.uniqagroup.com