Integrating finance and actuaries for FP&A in L&A

The need for finance and actuarial integration for FP&A

Life and annuity (L&A) insurance companies are facing mounting pressures. From a low interest rate environment, to slow market growth, to changing customer risk profiles and preferences, L&A insurers are persistently challenged to enhance business performance while also finding ways to enhance operational processes with maximum efficiency.

Given the dynamic nature of the market, L&A leaders are seeking more from their finance and actuarial processes. Leaders are expecting their financial planning and analysis (FP&A) teams to provide more strategic business insights, build exceptional business partnerships, and quickly identify emerging trends from their planning, budgeting, and forecasting (PB&F) processes.

Instead of focusing effort on gathering data to produce hindsight, leading insurers are looking to explain results with greater clarity and speed through enhanced capabilities that also enable insight and foresight. To establish and scale new, forward-looking processes, and enable more dynamic scenario analysis and forecasting, FP&A and actuarial functions must collaborate to share tools, processes, and skills more effectively. In doing so, they can produce a cohesive story, showcase desired insights, and better guide their organizations forward.

A Deloitte survey (Deloitte FP&A and Actuarial Study) of L&A insurance companies found that many insurers struggle to integrate their FP&A and actuarial processes, which negatively impacts their ability to manage enterprise performance¹. Why? Though the reasons cited by the insurers in our study include limitations in processes, tool sets, skill sets, and data, L&A insurers also noted a general gap in the understanding of what roles FP&A and actuarial functions should play in PB&F processes.

The chart below highlights what survey respondents indicated regarding the involvement of their actuarial groups in FP&A processes.¹

Actuarial role in business performance management processes:

Building industry-leading enterprise performance management systems

Given the importance of the enterprise performance management ecosystem, it’s critical that L&A organizations strive to improve their processes, data, and skillsets in FP&A so they can:

• Shift from hindsight to foresight
• Enhance quality of insights
• Enhance value to business leaders

Enabling the right organizational model, supported by the right processes, toolsets, and data allows leaders to enhance the value they add to the organization. We recommend considering the following enhancements based on our experience and insights from peer FP&A and actuarial insurance leaders.

How should organizations get started?

As actuarial and FP&A teams embark on the journey to improve their enterprise performance management processes and frameworks, they should consider the following:

• Understand where there are bottlenecks and shortcomings in the current planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes.
  
• Assign a transformation team consisting of actuarial and FP&A representation.
  
• Identify the people, processes, technologies, and data initiatives that enable greater collaboration and integration of actuarial and FP&A teams and models.
  

Endnotes

¹ Deloitte, FP&A and Actuarial Integration Study Survey, conducted 2020-21. Additionally, recent client interviews were conducted to supplement the dataset.