The previous article in this series walked through the seven steps of an insurance month-end close, from locking the sub-ledgers to the final sign-off. The steps themselves are not controversial. Most finance teams know exactly what they are supposed to do. So why do so many insurance closings still drag on for more than 10 days?
On-demand webinar | Watch now:Stop Closing the Books the Hard Way
The problem is usually not the people or the effort. The same handful of structural weaknesses show up in slow close after slow close, and every one of them is now solvable with technology that is mature, proven, and already widely used across the industry. APQC benchmark data show top performers closing in five days or fewer, while the slowest take ten or more, and the gap between those two groups is rarely talent. It is tooling.
Here are the five most common reasons an insurance close stays slow, and the kind of technology that removes each one.
Why does a fast close depend more on systems than on effort?
It is tempting to respond to a slow close by asking the team to work later. The data suggests that it rarely works.
Manual reconciliation alone consumes 30% to 40% of total close time, according to BlackLine research, with staff spending 10 to 20 hours a month matching transactions by hand. You cannot will those hours away with overtime. You can only remove them by changing how the work is done. The insurers that close fastest did not find more disciplined accountants. They re-engineered the process so the slow parts no longer require a human at all.
The most common reasons an insurance close stays slow
Reason 1: Your numbers live in spreadsheets and disconnected systems
Studies have repeatedly found that about 88% of spreadsheets contain errors, which is alarming when reserves, earned premiums, and reinsurance schedules are calculated inside them. The deeper problem is fragmentation. When data is copied between an ERP, a reporting tool, and dozens of local files, no one can be certain which version is correct. A recent survey found that 59% of CFOs still lack a complete, real-time view of cash and liquidity.
The fix: a single source of truth, meaning an integrated, cloud-based financial management platform where the general ledger and the premium, claims, and cash sub-ledgers all feed one connected system, so a change in the ledger flows straight through to every report. One finance advisory firm describes this not as a luxury but as “a prerequisite, not a nice-to-have.” Modern financial management suites are built precisely for this, unifying data across entities and breaking down silos that slow down closing.
Tip: before buying any new tool, map where your closing data actually lives today. The number of separate spreadsheets and manual handoffs is usually the single best predictor of how long your close takes.
Check out this case study:Astra Life Improves Reporting with Infor SunSystems and Gains Greater Insights with Infor EPM
Reason 2: Reconciliation is still done by hand
Reconciliation is the heaviest lifting in any close, and in insurance, the volumes are enormous. Premium to cash, claims to bank, ledger to sub-ledger, all multiplied across thousands of transactions a day. When done manually, it is both the slowest step and the most error-prone.
The fix: reconciliation automation with transaction matching, which automatically pairs obvious matches and surfaces only the exceptions for a human to judge. The results in insurance are well-documented.
One North American insurer automated up to 80% of its general ledger reconciliations and 70% of its high-volume transaction matching across more than 7,000 reconciliations a month, and cut the time to escalate issues to financial reporting by nearly a full month. A finance leader at the firm said the automation let the team “absorb work without adding headcount” even as the company grew through acquisitions.
Tip: start with your highest-volume, most repetitive reconciliations, which are usually premium and cash. That is where automation pays back fastest and frees the most hours.
Read more:What Is Continuous Close and Why Does It Matter?
Reason 3: Consolidating entities and currencies is a manual marathon
Insurers rarely operate as a single legal entity. Group structures, multiple licensed insurers, and cross-border operations mean the close has to combine many sets of books, eliminate the transactions between them, and translate currencies, all without double-counting. When that lives in a master spreadsheet that only one person fully understands, it is both slow and fragile.
The fix:enterprise performance management (EPM) and consolidation software that automates intercompany eliminations, multi-currency translation, and trial balance validation on a single platform. Western & Southern Financial Group, for example, standardized reconciliation reporting across six separate insurance entities, giving each one timely, summarized reporting it previously lacked. PT Astra Aviva Life, an Indonesian life insurer formed as a joint venture between Astra International and Aviva, layered dynamic EPM on top of its financial management system and cut the time required to complete financial reporting by 46%.
Tip: if your consolidation depends on one irreplaceable expert and one master file, treat that as a risk to remove, not a skill to celebrate.
Reason 4: You find out about problems too late
In a manual close, finance leaders often do not realize something is wrong until day eight, leaving no time to fix it gracefully. Waiting on data and information from other departments is one of the top three causes of close delays, cited by 40% to 50% of finance professionals in Ventana Research surveys.
The fix:real-time dashboards and a continuous close approach, where the team manages by exception and watches status, bottlenecks, and open items as the close happens rather than after. The cultural shift matters as much as the software. Teams that move to a continuous, daily-close rhythm report that they stop working backwards at month-end to reconstruct what happened because the books are already current. The month-end pile-up shrinks rather than spikes.
Tip: a simple shared close dashboard, even a basic one, often delivers more early value than any single piece of automation, because it makes the bottlenecks visible to everyone at once.
Reason 5: Regulatory and reserve complexity is handled with workarounds
IFRS 17, statutory reporting, and constantly shifting reserve estimates make insurance reporting uniquely demanding. Since IFRS 17 took effect on 1 January 2023, insurers must report contracts with far more granularity, and Deloitte has warned that this complexity puts real pressure on fast-close processes. Before automation became common, insurers’ monthly closes routinely ran three weeks or more.
The fix: purpose-built reporting and close automation that handle granular disclosures, enforce consistent treatment of reserves and reinsurance, and automatically produce a complete audit trail. The audit trail is not a side benefit. An automated, documented close does not just run faster, it stands up to auditors and regulators with far less scramble.
Astra Aviva Life, again, automated 70% of its regulatory reporting and built reusable templates to meet the requirements of the Indonesian Financial Services Authority, turning a compliance risk into a routine task.
Tip: treat reserve review as a monthly discipline supported by your systems, not a quarter-end event. Stale reserves are both a reporting risk and a solvency risk.
Read more:Accounting & ESG: A Winning Combo
What do insurers actually gain by fixing these?
Fixing these five issues is not about technology for its own sake. The payoff is concrete and measurable:
- Decisions made on fresh data, with board-ready numbers in days rather than weeks, so leadership steers with a current view instead of looking in the rearview mirror.
- Lower risk of misstatement, with reserves, reconciliations, and disclosures backed by a clean and automatic trail.
- The ability to scale without scaling headcounts. Astra Aviva Life held its finance and accounting headcount steady while the company grew from 200 to 500 employees, and the North American insurer absorbed acquisitions without adding staff.
- Time returned to the team for variance analysis, pricing support, and business partnering instead of manual processing.
More broadly, data from BlackLine and FloQast shows that close automation typically cuts cycle time by 30% to 50%. The head of finance and controls at Astra Aviva Life framed the goal well, describing the systems as a way to generate insight on the business and fuel strategic decisions rather than simply produce reports.
Technology doesn’t fix everything
One caution is worth stating plainly, because it separates real transformation from expensive disappointment. If the underlying data is messy, automation simply automates the mess. As one finance advisory firm put it, if your team is still reconciling across systems before reporting, software will only automate the reconciliation problem, not solve it.
Read more:Rebuilding Financial Resilience with Infor SunSystems Cloud for Insurance
The insurers who win fix the data foundation first, then layer automation on top. It is telling that nearly half of finance leaders name upgrading tools, data governance, and analytics as their top priority for the year ahead. The order of operations matters as much as the budget.
The slow insurance close is not a law of nature. It is the predictable result of five fixable things: spreadsheets standing in for a single source of truth, manual reconciliation, manual consolidation, late visibility, and regulatory workarounds. Each of those now has a mature technological solution, and insurers from Indonesia to North America have used these solutions to cut reporting time, hold headcount flat, and close with greater confidence.
The operators pulling ahead have stopped treating the close as a monthly act of heroism and started treating it as a process worth engineering. The tools to do it are no longer experimental. They are simply waiting to be adopted.
References:
- Rand Group, “How long should month-end close take? Benchmarks, red flags, and best practices” (APQC benchmark data): https://www.randgroup.com/insights/services/how-long-should-month-end-close-take-benchmarks-red-flags-and-best-practices/
- BPR Global, “Month-End Close Automation: Proven Guide” (manual reconciliation 30-40% of close time; 10-20 hours per month; BlackLine and FloQast reduction figures; departmental delays): https://bprglobal.co/resources/accounting-bookkeeping/month-end-close-automation/
- Upflow, “Month-End Close Process: Complete Guide & Checklist” (88% of spreadsheets contain errors): https://upflow.io/blog/cfo-reads/month-end-close
- Eide Bailly, “How Top CFOs Use Data to Shape Strategy” (59% of CFOs lack a real-time view of cash; nearly 50% prioritize upgrading tools and data governance): https://www.eidebailly.com/insights/articles/2026/3/how-cfos-use-data
- Eide Bailly, “Why Financial Reporting Becomes Unreliable During Growth” (single source of truth as a prerequisite; automating the mess): https://www.eidebailly.com/insights/articles/2026/5/financial-reporting-during-growth
- Trintech, “Insurance Financial Close, Reconciliation & Controls” (80% of GL reconciliations automated; 70% of transaction matching; 7,000+ monthly reconciliations; escalation cut by nearly a month): https://www.trintech.com/industry/insurance/
- Trintech, “Four Insurance Data Priorities Shaping Reconciliation and the AI Financial Close” (insurance finance leader on absorbing work without adding headcount): https://www.trintech.com/blog/four-insurance-data-priorities-shaping-reconciliation-and-the-ai-financial-close/
- Trintech, “Western & Southern Financial Automation Case Study” (six insurance entities): https://www.trintech.com/case-study/western-southern-financial/
- Houseblend, “Month-End Close Guide: Achieving a 3-Day Continuous Cycle” (continuous close and managing by exception; not working backwards at month-end): https://www.houseblend.io/articles/month-end-close-guide-3-day-continuous-cycle
- Artha Solutions, “Solving IFRS 17 Data Challenges” (Deloitte fast-close pressure; pre-automation 3+ week closes): https://www.thinkartha.com/solving-ifrs-17-data-challenges-a-deep-dive-for-insurance-it-leaders/
- Infor Customer Innovation Study, “PT Astra Aviva Life” (Infor SunSystems and Infor d/EPM; 46% reduction in financial reporting time; 70% of regulatory reporting automated; headcount held flat from 200 to 500 employees; finance leader quote): https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/astraavivalife/66622060
