The annuities department was faced with an accounting problem. The current accounting system would be obsolete in a few years and our business customers are currently experiencing resource issues when problems arise and support for this system is required.
Since financial reporting is a complex process, convoluted action was required to resolve this problem. The annuity technology group, along with the annuity business group came up with three possible solutions and conducted a high level requirements analysis and a cost benefit analysis to determine which solution to implement. The solutions analyzed were, do nothing and stay on the existing accounting system, go with a new accounting system designed and built by our Life Insurance partners, or build our own accounting engine.
The requirements and cost benefit analysis took several months to complete and a final decision would not be made until 18 months after the initiation of this project. The end result of the requirements and cost benefit analysis concluded that it was most beneficial to our business partners to build our own accounting engine; however this was not the elected solution.
Our suggestion to do nothing was not feasible; we were already facing resource issues for existing accounting problems. Additionally, through requirements analysis, we discovered that no future enhancements would be made to this old system, as the annuity business unit was the sole user of this system. Early on, we were able to eliminate remaining with our existing accounting system as a reasonable solution.
External pressure from our Life Insurance partners wanted us to commit to using their services. Life Insurance had designed and implemented an accounting system a few years ago that provided wonderf ...