Digitalization is one of today's megatrends and is changing business models, processes and interactions with customers in all sectors. The insurance industry, and therefore primary insurers and reinsurers, also have the opportunity to make intelligent use of this change and thus generate competitive advantages. Insurance portals, online branches and smart insurance apps, for example for daily insurance policies, play an important role in this.
Would you like to help shape this change at first hand and drive innovative business models and developments in the insurance industry? Then we can offer you exciting tasks in all areas of the insurance industry. You can become part of this megatrend at any level as a business or IT consultant or in architecture or application development and actively contribute to digitalization.
Large, long-term and challenging projects, demanding tasks and constant change make working in our dedicated teams particularly exciting and varied.
You will meet these colleagues in the Insurance division
Who are you and what is your main task?
My name is Christoph, I started at msg systems ag in 2012 as an IT Consultant and am now Lead IT Consultant.
As a software developer, I am currently working on an agile project where we are building a new platform for our customer as part of a scrum team, which will replace several existing systems in the future. The development takes place on the backend side - where I am working - in Java based on JEE, and on the frontend side in Angular; in both cases IntelliJ IDEA is used as the development environment. The data is persisted in a DB2 database.
What was the last training course you did?
As I want to develop into a software architect, I completed the internal msg “IT architect training program”, which lays the foundation for this. Building on this, further training courses (some with certification) will take place and, ideally, I will also be given my first architecture tasks in projects.
When did you start coding and which programming language did you use?
I gained my first programming experience in computer science lessons with QBasic, my first “real” program was a tool for the browser game Droidwars (later D-Wars), which I wrote in Delphi - that must have been around 2003. Today, I do most of my private programming in Bash and Python to make my home as intelligent as possible.
Who are you and what are your main tasks?
My name is Julian Mertens and I have been working as a Lead Business Consultant in the Insurance division at msg systems ag since 2018. In my current role as Requirements Lead, I am working on a sustainability project in which we are building a central platform for future reporting for our customer. The main components of this landscape are the data warehouse component (SAP BW) for storing the data and SAP Profitability and Performance Management (PaPM) for calculating and mapping the business logic. In my role, I work very closely with my business colleagues to understand the requirements so that I can translate them for our developers, who take over the implementation.
What makes your team unique for you?
What I particularly appreciate about my team is that I can rely on each and every one of them. This is not just limited to my own team or the business unit, but is also the case throughout the msg group. Regardless of whether support is required for my own project or I need help with another issue, I can rely on the support of my colleagues. We try to achieve the best possible goal together and you are never left alone, even during peak periods.
Which technology excites you the most and why?
I already decided to specialize in SAP and Business Intelligence during my studies in 2010 and am still enthusiastic about this topic today. Business intelligence provides insights and knowledge into data that would otherwise never have been possible. We all have to deal with business intelligence, whether privately or professionally. Be it private household accounting or monthly payroll accounting. The topic of business intelligence is just as diverse as the corresponding projects at our customers, which is why every project represents a new challenge in terms of content and technology.
Our methods & technologies
ABAP
Java
Angular
Scaled Agile Framework (SaFe)
Cloud
SAP S/4 HANA
Data models / databases
Scrum
Topics that move us
The design thinking approach enables us to create innovative solutions. Human-centered methods, the use of creative spaces and an iterative process based on feedback and learning create added value with and for the users of our solutions. This is how we help our customers in the insurance industry to inspire their policyholders.
Machine learning makes it possible to open up new areas of application for software and improve existing solutions. As a basis, we deal with the corresponding technologies.
Applications based on a cloud-native architecture are designed in such a way that they optimally utilise all the advantages of the cloud. Cloud services, e.g. from large hyperscalers, play a central role here. They provide the application to be developed with all the necessary resources so that the application can be easily installed and operated in a cloud environment.
Mobile applications are accounting for an ever-increasing proportion of software development. In order to develop attractive applications, we are working with new technologies and concepts, such as progressive web apps.
We no longer see the development of software solutions as an isolated process. The emergence of agile approaches such as Scrum has brought business and development closer together. With the DevOps approach, we go even further: the integration of operations and a high degree of automation for standardised processes such as code integration, testing and release management enable shorter feedback loops for new features and reduce risks with every deployment (in production).
New innovative technologies are changing the way we work. Robotic process automation (RPA) is one of these technologies. With RPA, repetitive, rule-based processes and tasks performed by humans can be automated by digital software robots. With our holistic ‘Cognitive & Robotic Process Automation’ approach, we combine artificial intelligence with RPA and business process management (BPM) and inspire our customers with sophisticated automation solutions. We analyse the potential of these innovative technologies and show how companies can benefit from them.
Together with the SAP Solution Manager, the SAP migration tools and msg FIT, we prepare the migration to SAP S/4HANA in the best possible way and simplify the decision-making process for the migration.
We structure, organise and manage the plan for the migration from SAP ECC to a central SAP S/4HANA application landscape for the customer or advise and support every step of the transformation process from the analysis phase to sandbox migrations and implementation with our experts and our decades of experience in insurance processes.
Experience management (XM) is currently one of the biggest trends. It is not only about the needs of the customer (CX - Customer Experience), but also those of the employees (EX - Employee Experience). Our aim is to recognise and understand the needs of insurers' target groups and, above all, to satisfy them efficiently and effectively. This is how we create satisfied employees and customers for our clients in the long term.
In addition to generating new business, key aspects of sales include customer care, up-selling, customer retention and winning back customers.
As msg systems ag, we respond flexibly to the changed framework conditions resulting from digitalisation, new customer behaviour and the re-regulation of sales and performance management and implement these requirements in customer projects in a targeted manner. We design new, hybrid sales strategies for our clients and drive forward the development of sales partner platforms.
At the touchpoints of the sales and communication channels, we pay particular attention to the fulfilment of customer wishes while taking sales needs into account.
All Insurance companies in the msg group
Insurance is versatile - this is also shown by the variety of companies within msg that deal with topics from the insurance sector and that are generally eligible for entry.
The parent company of the msg Group supports insurance companies with business and SAP consulting as well as customised solutions.
msg covers the international customer business in the insurance sector with a focus on SAP globally.
With its broad product portfolio, msg life is one of the leading specialists in the field of life insurance.
msg nexinsure offers an integrated solution platform for health and property and casualty insurance.
BELTIOS provides support in the insurance and financial services sector, focussing on actuarial issues.
For the health insurance and healthcare market, innovas offers solutions as well as specialist medical consulting and services.
PiAL Consult advises and supports small and medium-sized insurance companies in optimising their IT and specialist processes.
LPP manages old insurance portfolios for primary insurers.
Insights into the Insurance industry
For many decades, well-known customers from the insurance industry have placed their trust in us, including e.g:
- achmea
- Allianz
- Gothaer
- HUK-Coburg
- nationale nederlanden
- Munich RE
- Provinzial
- Versicherungskammer Bayern
- Öffentliche Versicherung Braunschweig
- Over 1000 training courses per year
- 12 people on average per team
- 1100 employees in the division
- 170 employees with over 20 years of service
- Over 80 team events per year
- 800 projects in 2020