Financial regulation is often seen as a compliance burden — something that must be adhered to in order to avoid penalties rather than a source of value.
Yet across Asia, it’s becoming one of the biggest catalysts for modernising finance functions, prompting insurers to re-examine how they operate, improve decision-making, and gain a competitive edge. These standards aren’t just regulatory hurdles; they’re forcing a fundamental rethink of how finance functions collect, process, and communicate data.
Examples of regulations that stand out include the International Financial Reporting Standard IFRS 17, the new IFRS 18 presentation and disclosure standard, sustainability reporting standards S1 and S2, and risk-based capital (RBC) rules.
While these frameworks come with their own challenges, they can also yield plenty of opportunities– provided they are tackled in the right way.
Blake Sowerby
Head of Special Projects, Finance – International for GeneraliFor instance, many insurers active in the region report how the implementation of IFRS 17 has enabled the finance function to be modernised and aligned more closely with other business units.
Hong Kong-based Blake Sowerby, Head of Special Projects, Finance – International for Generali, has witnessed the shift firsthand, noting a closer connection between actuarial and finance functions.
“There has been a significant increase in alignment between ‘Actuarial’ and ‘Finance’ views of the business and a blurring of knowledge between the two. With time, we are also seeing more efficiency with the ‘Risk’ view and overlap of tools and processes,” says Sowerby.
Chirag Shah
Managing Director of Asia and Insurance at SAP FioneerMoving the implementation of rules and standards beyond a tick-boxing exercise is challenging for several reasons. Success requires budgets, a shift in mindset – from compliance to excellence – and having the right data architecture in place.
Today, insurers often have to break down legacy and established data silos across the business. “Implementing these frameworks may require considerable investment in new technologies and data infrastructure. Each insurer must decide how this investment balances with the benefits derived,” says Chirag Shah, Managing Director of Asia and Insurance at SAP Fioneer.
The experience of IFRS 17 offers a preview of what this shift can look like in practice.
Lessons from IFRS 17
IFRS 17 requires granular, high-quality data on contracts, cash flows, and risk adjustments. This involves updating, further integrating the data architecture, and establishing strong data governance.
“There is considerable work required for an effective implementation of IFRS 17,” says Tim Howell, Chief Financial Officer for APAC at Zurich, which was one of the early global adopters of the standard. “Discussing early and openly the methodology principles and contract classifications ensured we supported alignment and standardised the required calculations.”
That early dialogue proved decisive. Other insurers that waited to resolve methodology debates later during implementation found alignment much harder to achieve.
Tim Howell
APAC Chief Financial Officer at ZurichPeter Telders, Partner at EY in Hong Kong, says companies that fail to treat IFRS 17 as a strategic exercise from the very beginning could face some limitations in the long run.
For instance, Telders recalls one insurer grouping business very broadly at the start, resulting in blurred product-level profitability, which could have been avoided with an early re-design of policy and data choices, but is now costing both time and money to resolve.
Francesco Nagari, Global IFRS Insurance Leader for Deloitte, says that proper planning up front saves in the long term.
Five years ago, one of Nagari’s insurance clients had a highly fragmented actuarial model. The general ledgers were highly disconnected, spread across multiple APAC jurisdictions, and held on-premises within local business units.
Fast forward to today, this particular firm has moved all general ledgers to a single cloud platform, modernising the actuarial model in the process and introducing a very sophisticated financial actuarial sub-ledger.
“Because of an investment in technology, and because of a realignment of financial and actuarial functions, the company has been able to maintain its competitive position in the market, despite having to cope with a far more stringent and rigorous set of requirements,” says Nagari. “This has significantly increased the speed and efficiency with which they operate.”
Underlying every success story is the same foundation – data quality and system integration – which underpins the technology choices now shaping insurers’ finance transformations.
Francesco Nagari
Global IFRS Insurance Leader at DeloitteData and technology
Effective implementation of new standards and legislative frameworks often means replacing legacy technology, such as spreadsheets and manual processes, with more sophisticated solutions that not only meet the demands of regulators but also help create a robust finance architecture for steering towards future growth.
For instance, “IFRS 17 is a great opportunity to finally overcome the scattered landscape of desktop solutions and interim databases complicating the integration between actuarial, transactional and accounting systems,” says Alexander Hahn, who leads business development for Insurance Finance at SAP Fioneer.
He adds that implementing a uniform subledger solution across all valuation models leads to more “efficient financial closing processes, efficient reporting capabilities, and an effective system of internal controls”.
Alexander Hahn
Director, Insurance Finance at SAP FioneerBeyond compliance systems, technology is also redefining how insurers think about forecasting and planning.
The need to innovate with artificial intelligence is also shaping the financial world, with senior executives now able to harness the new technology to deliver predictive insights and enhance decision-making.
“’Flexibility’, ‘transparency’, ‘integration capability’ and ‘strong data governance’ are some of the guiding principles in the evolution of future technologies in the accounting space and under IFRS 17 in particular,” says Hahn. “Performing ‘what-if’ analyses on large data volumes will be crucial to simulate the insurers’ future business.”
These lessons matter now more than ever as a wave of new regulations is reaching Asia-Pacific markets.
Regulatory pressures
Finance transformation is especially relevant in APAC as insurers across the region find themselves looking down the road to a slew of new standards and regulations being introduced.
While many APAC markets implemented IFRS 17 in 2023, others – including the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, India – are still rolling out the framework.
Nagari estimates that around two-thirds of Asian firms that will eventually have to implement IFRS 17 have yet to do so.
For now, Japan is only applying IFRS 17 on a voluntary basis. China has introduced IFRS 17 for listed companies, with the expectation that other entities will have to start applying it from 2026.
New global reporting standards for sustainability, IFRS S1 and IFRS S2, are also being introduced across many jurisdictions. IFRS S1 sets out the general requirements for a comprehensive set of sustainability-related financial disclosures, while IFRS S2 includes additional provisions related to climate.
Risk-based capital (RBC) standards are another regulatory requirement that APAC insurers increasingly find themselves coming up against.
Insurers that have accomplished integration across steering functions like Finance, Risk and Planning find themselves in a strong position for dealing with this onslaught of new requirements.
“When insurers think about efficiency, they want to create as much harmonisation across [applications] as they can, rather than having different processes for different sets of standards,” says Erik Bleekrode, APAC head of insurance for KPMG. “While there is no immediate synergy between capital requirements and accounting, insurers that have set things up well for IFRS 17 will definitely be able to benefit from a capital perspective.”
Some of Asia’s smaller insurers are only now starting to think about a comprehensive overhaul of their finance function. These players have the opportunity to build smarter from others’ early lessons.
Erik Bleekrode
APAC Head of Insurance at KPMGThe way ahead for APAC
Generali’s Sowerby, whose company was among the first wave of global insurers to tackle IFRS 17, has some words of advice for those now coming up the curve.
“We were all navigating uncharted waters,” he says, speaking about his firm’s experience with IFRS 17.
“Within this context, successfully getting to go-live was the ‘right’ way as it enabled precisely the type of transparency that the standard was designed to create. With this improved transparency and the benefit of many quarters closed, Generali has been able to optimise the application of the standard across our businesses.”
Sowerby suggests that there are a few key steps for the project-planning phase of finance transformation: put in place robust governance, foster strong collaboration among the finance, actuarial and technology functions, and embed data quality controls from the very beginning.
Muzammil Patel
Managing Director at AciesExperiences like these raise a broader regional question: how many insurers will apply those lessons when their turn comes? Whether they do often comes down to incentives.
In markets with less external capital pressure, like India, there’s less urgency to act, so progress is slower even when the steps are clear. “While there is some work being done on data back-filling and data quality, there needs to be much more work on sustainable data architecture,” says Muzammil Patel, managing director at Acies, an Indian-based consultancy firm.
Others see momentum building regardless. Some Indian insurers are starting to think about how the implementation of IFRS 17 can be used to break down data silos, according to Adhiraj Bhown, a partner at KPMG in India. He says that, with the IFRS 17 deadline looming, many firms are finding it easier to get Board approval for transforming their business.
Whether driven by external incentives or internal ambition, the pattern is similar: anticipating regulatory change accelerates finance transformation. By modernising systems, improving data quality, and fostering collaboration, insurers can build a finance function that is more agile, efficient, and insight-driven.
