It has never been easy being an insurance company CFO. Inaddition to the issues created by complex legacy systems andorganizational models–and the move to digital transformation–CFOsin recent years have had to deal with new risk, regulatory andcompliance requirements. 

As part of Accenture's 2014 High Performance FinanceStudy–in which we spoke to more than 600 CFOs and seniorfinance officers in multiple industries–we surveyed more than 75individuals from major P&C and life insurance companiesworldwide. We found that insurance CFOs, like finance officers inother industries, have added "achieving growth" to an already longlist of high priorities. This means that, in addition to theirongoing focus on operational cost management, insurance financeexecutives are making plans and investments that will create asolid foundation for future growth. Executing on these plans,however, will not be easy.

Respondents highlighted managing business complexity as a keychallenge. In particular, dealing with legacy systems andenvironment was highlighted by 59% of insurers as a key issue.Legacy systems paired with the need to optimize the capitalstructure of the enterprise were the top two issues named byrespondents. The overall challenge of managing the needs of diversestakeholders was the third most commonly identified concern, namedby 49%. Complexity cannot be avoided, but managing complexityrequires concerted action to simplify, standardize and optimizebusiness information, processes and tools.

In general, surveyed insurers have been relatively slow tocentralize their finance and risk resources. Many have multipleoperating segments, each with their own risk and finance groups,and this has made integration difficult. Currently, only 12% saythat they have a single, enterprise-wide finance and riskrepository. But this is changing; in two years' time, almostthree-quarters of insurance respondents say that a single,enterprise-wide risk and finance repository is their targetmodel.

Among those surveyed, P&C insurers have a particularlystrong aspiration to reach this target model. In our experience,greater centralization has many benefits, including moreefficiency, and the ability to serve customers better and on atimelier basis. While many companies have avoided moving to provenshared services operating models–usually for fear of losing contextand connection with the business areas they support–there areclearly opportunities to centralize key services and expandbusiness insight and reach by leveraging improved and expandedsources of information. 

Insurance finance executives who are serious about making ashift toward growth should be thinking about three key elementsright now: 

1) Get the technology platformin place. Many insurers have not meaningfullyupdated their finance and risk platforms for 10 years, some notsince the run-up to Y2K. This has forced a level of creativity (andcomplexity) to support ongoing needs over the years while livingwith historical processes and information structures. If theyhaven't done so already, insurers should be taking steps to updatetheir platforms so that they can simplify processes, providedramatically improved information access, and, in many cases,reduce cost through technological innovations such as cloud andin-memory computing.

2) Get organized forregulatory change. Around the world, insurers face newregulations aimed at strengthening their capital positions andensuring that they are able to structure and manage their riskprograms appropriately. Among insurers surveyed for our research,43% say that regulation is having a large negative impact on theirfinance function's performance, and an overwhelming 98% say thataddressing regulatory and compliance issues is important to theirfinance function's performance.Getting organized entails preparingthe necessary data for regulatory compliance, while making steadyprogress against monitoring and reporting compliance needs, amongmore strategic change imperatives.

3) Align talent with the growthagenda. Too many insurers overburden their mostproductive people with low-value-added transactional activities.Actions aimed at reducing complexity, organizing data and takingadvantage of new technologies should be linked to a talent strategythat seeks to free up people to work in areas that bring real valueto customers and shareholders. It may be necessary to train peopleto give them the skills required for growth areas such asperformance management and analytics, as the focus shifts tointerpretation rather than data accumulation.

Insurance company CFOs will need to juggle prioritiesdexterously over the next few years. Every insurer has more mature,traditional lines of business with largely predictable revenuestreams, and emerging products that offer good prospects but areinherently uncertain. There are two key ways to for the Financefunction to focus on growth while allowing latitude for promisinggrowth opportunities. The first is to improve finance and riskcapabilities to enable both current business performance and newbusiness investment and growth. The second is to engage activelyacross the business to help govern, measure, and navigate the levelof change needed to drive growth in the digital era. Leaders that do both of these things should be well-positioned forprofitable growth.