Allianz Life builds on previous success with ServiceNow ITSM to streamline and automate compliance processes, help reduce costs, avoid risks, improve the client experience and align with the company’s business objectives.
From fragmentation to automation
For many financial services firms, the goal of compliance is to avoid the inopportune: failed audits, financial penalties, higher risk exposure. Allianz Life, a U.S.-based leader in life insurance and retirement solutions, is approaching compliance from a very different angle.
Allianz is transforming compliance from a source of complexity and expense into business advantages. Even in the face of ever-increasing compliance challenges and rapid growth in its customer base, its partner network, and its geographical presence, the company is transforming compliance tasks into automated, streamlined, accelerated workflows.
And in the process, Allianz Life is mastering the business side of compliance while creating new business value and new sources of competitive advantage.
When the compliance transformation initiative at Allianz Life started, the company was focused on improving the efficiency of IT service management (ITSM), not just compliance. The IT work model was characterized by fragmented manual processes.
Key workflows such as incident management, service requests, and change management used everything from email and spreadsheets to taps on the shoulder to move tasks forward.
Allianz implemented the Now Platform to help increase efficiency and productivity.
Allianz Life implemented the Now Platform to help increase efficiency and productivity. Using a single cloud-based platform, the company was able to bring unrivaled capabilities to ITSM and create intelligent, automated workflows. By implementing a unified platform, Allianz was also able increase collaboration among employees and improve visibility into workstreams.
Based on the early successes of the Now Platform in ITSM, Allianz Life executives began recognizing additional opportunities for extracting business value—and compliance was a prime example.
“We knew that if we could work more efficiently, we could engage with the business more effectively and serve broader business objectives,” says Tressa Johansen, Deputy Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, Allianz Life. “With ServiceNow, we saw a way to transform the work model for compliance.”
Allianz Life recognized that the Now Platform could help them:
- With business process optimization and bring efficiency to daily business practices
- Make it easier for employees to interact with the compliance department
- Improve reporting and risk assessment capabilities
Launching a compliance transformation
To further explore the opportunities, Allianz Life executives collaborated with ServiceNow Inspire—an executive advisory program made up of former CIOs and industry consultants.
“It was about leveraging an existing investment, but more than that it was about exploring how compliance processes could actually contribute to business goals, not just improve technical capabilities,” says Tressa. “They showed us how their solution could conform to our business, not the other way around.”
The Allianz Life leadership team identified two strategic drivers behind managing the business of compliance: 1) automating workflows to accelerate results; and 2) improving the client experience when engaging with the compliance department.
These strategic drivers were then mapped to specific business outcomes that could be accomplished. They included automating processes related to regulatory incidents, reducing resource requirements to perform tasks, managing approvals, tracking records through defined workflows, and so on.
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