How technology can help your organization with corporate accountability

The global repercussions of the scandals involving Enron and WorldCom have been far reaching with investor confidence at an all time low and talk of new corporate reform legislation and best practice echoing around company boardrooms and Governments alike.

This can affect insurance companies in particular, not only as global corporations but also as risk-managers who have to pick up the pieces.

The drive towards rebuilding fragile investor confidence and engendering a new era of corporate integrity has fuelled the requirement for best-of-breed technology solutions to assist finance departments with increased levels of accuracy, transparency, speed and control in the reporting of financial information to the many stakeholders that comprise the business community.

New regulatory frameworks, directives and reports - such as Sarbanes-Oxley in the US and Higgs in the UK - are being issued by governmental and industry bodies to improve corporate accountability. Indeed, a significant investment in fit-for-purpose financial management software is expected as the demand for certification of the accuracy of results, quarterly reporting and faster production of annual reports is imposed on finance departments across Europe and beyond.

Better management information is a financial officers number one weapon and best practice in financial reporting is a key objective for all organizations irrespective of their market sector. But SunSystems recognizes that the insurance services market has some specific requirements that determine how it selects business and financial management solutions.

Damian Traynor, global marketing director at SunSystems, comments: "With over 20 years of experience and hundreds of customer sites around the world, we know that insurance companies are looking for a comprehensive solution that will seamlessly integrate complex back- and front-office data. They want best-of-breed financial and business management functionality as well as enhanced profitability, asset, cash and risk management capabilities. And they want effective litigation management together with customer retention information in a single view. Through standardized deployment methodologies, SunSystems is able to achieve all this, through mapping between applications in an effective manner, offering visibility and control to insurance companies and brokers alike."

SunSystems provides a single integrated view of the financial health of an organization in real-time and from any location around the world. For the first time, insurance organizations can benefit from implementing a highly scalable, low cost and low risk solution that tackles not only the increasingly onerous demands of corporate reform legislation, but also delivers comprehensive and cost effective financial functionality. These strengths, combined with extensive reporting and analytical capabilities, will boost profitability, improve capital usage and enhance risk management across the enterprise.