Providing Financial Systems leadership to deliver transformation following a merger

Friends Life is a FTSE 100 Life insurance company that was formed from the merger of Friends Provident, AXA’s UK life and pensions business, and Bupa Health Assurance (BHA).

The challenge:

Following decades of growth and acquisitions, AXA Life had launched a significant finance transformation programme. The business case for the programme was triggered by a need to implement Solvency II regulation and was underpinned by a strategy to deliver Solvency II into a much leaner operating model. Cost and efficiency benefits were to be derived through a standardisation of core processes and simplified systems. When AXA Life was later merged with Friend Provident to create Friends Life, the finance transformation programme was expanded to include the full integration of the Friends Provident finance systems, processes and operations, whilst also conducting a separation exercise from the remaining AXA businesses that were not part of the acquisition (AXA Wealth & AXA PPP). Bupa was subsequently acquired, adding to the integration exercise.

The solution:

SystemsAccountants was retained by the CFO to provide an interim Finance Transformation Director and a programme leadership team of five programme managers to shape and deliver the finance transformation agenda.

The outcome:

Over four years we provided over 75 contractors and interim consultants (ranging from Project Managers, Solution Architects, Finance Design Authorities, Transition Managers, Change Managers, PMO, Business Analysts, & GL/Qlikview/Kalido consultants) to deliver: a new Target Operating Model implementation, consolidation of Finance Operations into a single location, implementation of a single General Ledger and Procurement System, an Enterprise Data Warehouse implementation, upgrade of all actuarial models, separation and upgrade of infrastructure, a full financial reporting overhaul, and an end-to-end process review and re-design.