The insurance industry is in the midst of a digital transformation, driven by the need for efficiency, scalability and adaptability to ever-changing business and regulatory landscapes. At the heart of this evolution is technology, which enables insurers to manage diverse asset classes, ensure compliance and produce accurate financial reporting. However, many insurers remain burdened by legacy systems鈥攐ften installed 鈥渙n premise鈥濃�攖hat lead to data silos, manual processes and inefficiencies.
These challenges hinder productivity, accuracy and timely decision-making. To keep pace, insurance companies must modernize their investment operations and accounting processes by leveraging robust technology solutions and automation. Below, we outline five practical ways to simplify insurance investment operations while ensuring your organization is positioned for long-term success.
- Automate Trade Capture for Public and Private Investments
Real-time or daily trade capture is critical to operational efficiency, especially for complex asset classes like syndicated bank loans. These nuanced assets often require manual intervention for activities such as sourcing valuations, processing delayed draws and handling fees鈥攁ll of which introduce the risk of human error.
By automating trade capture for both public and private investments, insurers can:
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- Eliminate manual data entry and its associated risks.
- Achieve straight-through processing (STP) across all asset types.
- Free up internal staff to focus on higher-value activities, like cash flow modeling and portfolio analysis.
Partnering with a technology provider experienced in complex assets can bring the tools and expertise necessary to optimize trade capture workflows.
- Automate Pricing, Valuation Updates and Security Master Refreshes
Accurate pricing and valuation are essential for effective investment accounting. Automating the integration of multiple market data vendors for waterfall pricing ensures comprehensive and timely valuation updates. Additionally, implementing security master refreshes automates the classification of securities and proper accounting treatment for updated holdings.
Insurers can also benefit from automated ratings updates and NAIC Securities Valuation Office (SVO) filing preparations to stay ahead of quarterly compliance requirements. With automation, these processes can be managed seamlessly, reducing the likelihood of errors and minimizing time spent on manual reviews.
- Perform Daily 3-Way Reconciliations
Legacy systems often rely on month-end reconciliations, creating bottlenecks and increasing the risk of delayed reporting. Modern insurers are adopting daily tri-party reconciliation processes, which involve:
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- Reconciling positions, cash and transactions between managers, custodians and accounting books of record (ABOR).
- Capturing trades and valuing portfolios daily.
Daily reconciliations eliminate month-end close delays, allowing insurers to treat month-end as any other business day. Outsourcing non-core operational functions to a competent service provider can further streamline this process. For example, these providers can act as the first line of defense in resolving breaks or exceptions, only escalating issues to internal staff when necessary.
The result? Internal teams gain more time to focus on analytics, reporting and strategic decision-making rather than spending time resolving data discrepancies.
- Leverage Automation for Document and Event Notice Processing
Alternative investments, such as private credit, commercial mortgage loans (CMLs) and limited partnerships (LPs), require significant manual effort to process notices and actions. Using robotic process automation solutions to automate the capture, digitization and parsing of key event notices and updates can eliminate the risks of manual entry and delayed processing.
Such systems can:
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- Digitally collect, parse and process lengthy documents like credit agreements and event notices from agent banks or general partners.
- Automatically update and 鈥榬oll鈥� rates or fees for private loans.
- Reconcile funded and unfunded commitment values to prevent over-allocation.
- Centralize document storage for easy digital retrieval.
By streamlining the handling of alternative investments, insurers can scale operations without overwhelming internal staff.
- Streamline the Corporate Ledger Feed
Insurers often manage multiple accounting bases, such as statutory, GAAP and tax. Manually mapping general ledger (GL) entries to corporate accounts across these bases is time-consuming and error-prone. Automating this mapping process can significantly streamline month-end and GL processing.
Cloud-based SaaS platforms, such as SS&C Singularity, offer embedded intelligent automation that enables:
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- Seamless mapping of accounting journal entries to the proper corporate ledger accounts, by accounting basis.
- Real-time visibility into operational processes.
- Scalable, efficient month-end close procedures.
Why Modernization Matters
Modernizing underlying technology platforms and infrastructure provides insurers with the ability to efficiently diverse and scale their investment portfolios, taking advantage of new asset types and investment opportunities that can provide incremental yield, without having to add additional staff or operating costs.
To that end, as insurers continue to increase allocations to alternative assets and private credit, it鈥檚 critical they also adopt technology solutions that are both agile and scalable. Outdated, Excel-based workflows are no longer sufficient to handle the complexities and volume of activity on today鈥檚 investment portfolios.
Modern solutions offer enhanced capabilities to:
- Address evolving regulatory requirements.
- Capture and process both standardized and non-standardized investment activities at scale
- Enable seamless integration across front, middle and back-office systems and counter-parties.
- Provide real-time dashboards and KPIs to support data-driven decision-making.
SS&C Singularity: The Future of Insurance Investment Operations
SS&C Singularity is a cloud-based, multi-tenant, desktop and mobile-accessible platform designed to transform insurance investment operations. Through user-configurable online dashboards and advanced automation tools, Singularity supports real-time operational workflows, streamlines reconciliations and enhances the scalability of investment accounting across all asset types.
Supported by seasoned professionals, Singularity is not only a leading SaaS platform, but also offers outsourcing and co-sourcing services to augment internal staff and resources, for increased scale and operating flexibility.
Discover how SS&C Singularity can help simplify your investment operations. Request a demo today or download our "SS&C Singularity's Platform for Independent Asset Managers" infographic to learn more.
Conclusion
Simplifying insurance investment operations is not just about reducing inefficiencies鈥攊t鈥檚 about preparing your organization for long-term success. By automating trade capture, pricing, reconciliation and event processing, insurers can improve accuracy, productivity and decision-making while freeing internal teams to focus on high-value tasks.
Don鈥檛 let outdated systems and processes hold your organization back. Embrace technology, streamline your operations and unlock the potential of your investment ecosystem.
