Getting unstuck in
the middle

What happens when a much-needed financial modernization initiative stalls, leaving a business wondering what has become of its investment? Can a mid-program revamp help get a large financial transformation back on track? A financial services company had come to this crossroads along its own transformation journey.

For many years, this insurance and investment firm has been helping customers achieve financial security. The company offers a comprehensive range of products for businesses and individuals. A large finance transformation program for the company’s life and annuity business was underway. The program involved consolidating data from more than 28 legacy administration systems into a modern data lake for finance, actuarial, and other departments to use. Although a couple of years had passed since the program kicked off—and a large amount of money had been spent—not a lot of progress had been made.

Meanwhile, the business was having challenges with its complex and overly manual financial reporting process. The administration systems were producing inconsistent data as the new data lake solution that was part of the transformation still wasn’t functional. Between these challenges and a growing perception of the technology team as a bottleneck, the client was beginning to question the value of its investment.