Generali plans for long-term insurance excellence

Generali supports policyholders whenever disaster strikes or accidents occur. To ensure that global economic conditions do not impact service — and comply with IFRS 17 rules — Generali adopted Anaplan for long-term strategic financial planning. With this new solution Generali can comply with new accounting standards, react rapidly to market changes, and steer a course for enduring success.

From health scares to natural disasters, Generali supports its customers in their hour of greatest need. Established in 1831, the famed insurer’s approach to business development and risk management has ensured reliability for almost two centuries, even as recent economic volatility has created unprecedented challenges.

The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) foundation compounded Generali's challenges when it released new international accounting standards for insurance companies. Known as IFRS 17, the new standards require insurance companies to provide consistent information on current and future profits from insurance contracts for up to 40 years.

These new standards, which took effect in 2021, proved challenging given Generali’s financial planning systems. “We relied on over 300 different spreadsheets and four planning tools, each with a high cost of ownership,” explains Frédéric Corre, Head of IT Corporate Solutions at Generali. “Data is fuel for insurance companies, and we need to be able to provide fast, accurate, real-time information to business leaders. We simply weren’t doing that as effectively as we hoped to.”

“The spreadsheet-based process took us nearly two months to build a global view of our business,” adds Raphaël Guilmin, Strategic Planning Director at Generali.  “By the time we finished creating financial plans, the underlying data was out of date and making changes would take us another couple of months.”

Taking a streamlined approach

To accelerate financial planning and improve forecast timeliness, Generali reimagined its financial planning processes with Anaplan. Today, the company manages financial planning end-to-end using Anaplan — from initial calculation to final reporting.

“We use a huge amount of information from different landscapes, including actuarial and accounting data,” reflects Corre. “Anaplan pulls all of this data together in a streamlined way and provides a collaborative tool for a wide range of users in the company, whether that’s finance, IT, or business leaders.”

Generali selected Anaplan because it could also significantly enhance transparency and visibility. “I’m often asked to explain the calculations underpinning our plans to provide context for key decisions,” Guilmin explains. “With Anaplan I’m better able to respond to these requests because I have a complete view of our financial position and I can easily drill down into the details.”

Preparing for decades of prosperity

With its financial planning activities in Anaplan, Generali can forecast the impact of market forces on company performance for 40 years and beyond to satisfy IFRS 17 requirements. Strategic forecasts are created faster and with more up-to-date information.

“With Anaplan we can react very quickly to global economic events and volatility,” Guilmin says. “Previously it took two months to build a global financial plan, and now we can do this in one month — a 50 percent reduction. Moreover, we can make a new business view in just one week, which helps us to keep pace with fast-changing economic conditions.”

Moving from four financial planning tools to a single platform has also reduced costs. “Manual processes managed with multiple systems were costly to the business,” comments Corre. “By shifting to Anaplan we’ve eliminated the infrastructure, management, and licensing costs associated with our old systems and cut the total cost of ownership of our financial planning activities.”

Looking ahead, Generali is keen to explore new use cases for Anaplan. “Forget the past. Forget the use of spreadsheets,” advises Corre. “We open Anaplan and we build the forecast together. Anaplan has opened the window to a whole new range of possibilities, and we’re excited to see where it will take us next.”