OREANDA-NEWS.  SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Ageas, an international insurance group with a heritage spanning more than 190 years, has purchased the industry’s first end-to-end insurance software in the cloud deployed by a single software vendor.

The enterprise insurance software in the cloud is a comprehensive insurance-in-a-box offering that streamlines insurance processes from sales and operations to finance. The software supports the full insurance lifecycle, including back- and front-end processes, with an all-inclusive set of integrated SAP solutions that help insurance companies operate their business in the cloud.

Ageas specializes in building insurance partnerships with banks and retailers, and is currently expanding into new markets in Southeast Asia.

“Ageas will launch the suite at its new joint venture in the Philippines and potentially use the new solution portfolio for other green-field operations. With this comprehensive set of next-generation enterprise software from SAP, Ageas gets to focus on its customers and the core of its business, instead of being in the business of also running a midscale technology services firm internally,” said Hans Van Wuijckhuijse, regional director, Business Development Asia, Ageas. “Previously we would have struggled to reconcile numerous independent systems from multiple providers involving multiple systems integrators. This integrated set of SAP solutions, coupled with SAP taking end-to-end responsibility for this software-as-a-service offering, will give Ageas the much-needed agility to help us establish and penetrate into new markets.”

The hosted, end-to-end enterprise insurance software is built on SAP S/4HANA, which delivers simplified customer engagement tools through the SAP HANA platform. It includes over 30 SAP solutions and omnichannel functionality powered by software from hybris, an SAP company. Core insurance solutions support policy administration, quotation, underwriting, claims, commissions, collections and disbursements, as well as finance, procurement, HR and enterprise analytics. These are all deployed on SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, a fully managed and secure cloud that offers flexibility and quick time to market.

“This is a transformative development for the industry, particularly as insurers are coping with today’s consumer-powered marketplace and the increased digitization of everything,” said Ross Wainwright, global head of financial services, SAP. “Never before has there been such a comprehensive cloud solution for the insurance sector. We are proud to lead the IT revolution in insurance with the powerful in-memory processing of the SAP HANA platform and real-time business insights.”

Beyond the robust platform functionality, SAP will be providing a simplified end-to-end engagement model, from subscription to services and from enablement to support. It will enable Ageas to streamline further its IT management and support, reduce total cost of ownership, accelerate its time to market, strengthen operational agility across lines of business and achieve transparency and compliance. The comprehensive set of integrated insurance solutions in the cloud is expected to cut costs by 20 percent to 40 percent in the first five years, when compared to traditional, disparate systems. It also eliminates upfront IT costs due to its pay-as-you-use model. The end-to-end enterprise software from SAP streamlines operations and generates ROI in just 18 to 20 months, rather than three to five years.

Leveraging many years of experience working with more than 5,000 insurance customers worldwide, SAP is uniquely positioned to understand the challenges and opportunities that insurance firms face and is committed to growing with the industry.