(Photo credit: Dave Lindblom.)
Accenture (New York) has opened the Innovation Center for Finance & Risk in New York with the stated aim of helping financial services clients quickly develop and scale advanced data and analytics capabilities. The center will help insurers address a range of challenges associated with digital disruption, according to Luther Klein, the center’s lead for Finance & Risk Services.
Part of Accenture’s international innovation network, the Center focuses on developing solutions for finance and risk, data management, data engineering, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and reporting, according to an Accenture statement. It will offer consulting, development and operations services across the end-to-end data and analytics solution lifecycle, already has more than 20 industry partnerships with universities, fintech startups and global financial institutions.
Luther Klein, Finance & Risk Services, Accenture.
Accenture frames the Center’s opening within its February announcement that the company is accelerating its investments in innovation in the U.S., including opening 10 new innovation hubs and expanding its regional network of technology delivery centers by the end of 2020. The company reports that it will also invest $1.4 billion in training to ensure its people have leading-edge capabilities to serve its clients, while creating 15,000 highly skilled new jobs in the U.S.
The Innovation Center will focus on helping financial institutions achieve cost-efficient growth and enhance regulatory controls as they implement a new generation of data and analytics capabilities, powered by big data, cloud and artificial intelligence technologies, to address regulatory reporting (including CCAR, CECL and FRTB), financial and risk reporting, the Accenture statement says. The company says that the new Center will help institutions accelerate that transition by using next-generation tools and technology enabled by the Accenture Insights Platform (AIP), the Accenture Labs, and by leveraging Accenture’s software alliances.
Helping Insurers Navigate ‘Significant Digital Disruption’
“Accenture’s Innovation Center for Finance & Risk will serve as a New York focal point that brings together our people, capabilities and advanced technologies like AI, big data and analytics,” comments Klein.
Klein observes that the insurance industry is in a period of significant digital disruption with advanced technologies opening up opportunities to drive more efficiency, insights and value from data. “We are working together with our insurance clients on building data and analytic solutions that leverage these new technologies and tools,” he comments. “For example, we have been driving process efficiency and enhanced control in insurers’ finance processes through robotics, automating data lineage to drive data transparency and fast-tracking the transition to big data environments through conversion tools, playbooks and the Accenture Insights Platform—AIP.”
Cutting-Edge Tech, Flexible Delivery Methods
Accenture reports that it is helping several of the world’s largest retail, commercial and investment banks with initiatives to enhance their data-science, analytics-technology and data-engineering capabilities and embed analytics across their businesses. Using what the company characterizes as cutting-edge technology and flexible delivery methods, Accenture claims that it has helped these clients reduce the time to deploy these solutions by as much as 80 percent while reducing implementation costs by 75 percent.
“Our new Innovation Center for Finance & Risk fosters deep collaboration between our clients and Accenture data scientists and technology experts, who understand their challenges,” comments Antonio Castro, the innovation center’s lead for Accenture Analytics, part of Accenture Digital. “Together, we can work quickly and effectively to ideate, prototype and scale solutions. The center has already enabled us to accelerate delivery of next-generation data platforms, including building the data pipelines, models and dashboards for risk, marketing and performance reporting for a number of leading financial institutions.”
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