KPMG launches IFRS 17 Managed Services powered by SAS

KPMG South Africa is launching an IFRS 17 Managed Services offering powered by SAS, which will provide additional analysis, automation and will lower operational costs for insurance clients. The firm’s actuarial, finance and managed service operational excellence will help manage the IFRS 17 analytical and reporting burden.
Clients will benefit from this service in several ways including end-to-end automation from data quality, IFRS 17 modeling, disclosure reporting, GL posting and Management reporting through SAS’s industry-leading software.

“Through this offering, we position our clients at the center of an alliance ecosystem which we believe addresses the most pressing issues faced by their finance and risk functions” explains Mark Danckwerts, Partner, Head of Insurance, KPMG South Africa.

The solution will be hosted on KPMG’s secure infrastructure. This will lead to a lower long-term maintenance effort and cost by leveraging from other global deployments as a Global Alliance Partnership.
“KPMG is a key provider of accounting change enablement services for SAS risk solutions around IFRS 17 and more. We see them playing a big role not only assisting customers to attain IFRS 17 compliance but also helping them capitalise on the strategic opportunities this change affords. Their professionals bring practical experience, deep financial industry knowledge and cross-functional skills that when partnered with SAS’s latest technology creates, for our customers, a sustainable path towards addressing accounting change compliance.” Akesh Lalla, Country Manager for SAS South Africa stated.

Recently the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) published the IFRS 17 accounting standards, superseding the IFRS 4 Insurance Contracts standards, that all insuring and re-insuring companies need to report on by 1 January 2023. The standards were designed to achieve the goal of a consistent, principle-based accounting for insurance contracts, providing a more uniform measurement and presentation approach for all insurance contracts.

Furthermore, the standards require additional analyses to enable more detailed reporting and disclosures, which in turn is more demanding on resources and senior management time. We expect more insurers will focus their attention on process automation and initiatives that lower operational costs, however, may place a much larger burden on infrastructure and IT service-related costs.