Workday Podcast: How One CAO Leveled Up With the Right Technology

Bruno Navarro: There’s no shortage of predictions about how artificial intelligence, generative AI, and automation will change the business world. But evidence of how finance and accounting leaders are putting the transformative technology to use is growing. I’m Bruno Navarro, and today on the Workday Podcast, we have, as our guest, Evan Cabat, chief accounting officer at SiriusPoint, a global underwriter of insurance and reinsurance, providing solutions to clients and brokers around the world. The publicly listed company is headquartered in Bermuda with offices in New York, London, and Stockholm, among other locations. Evan, thank you for being here.

Evan Cabat: Thank you very much for having me today, Bruno.

Navarro: I appreciate your time. First of all, could you walk me through your background at SiriusPoint and tell me a little bit about your current role?

Cabat: Sure. I joined SiriusPoint about two years ago after spending nearly 15 years in accounting at a large public accounting firm. I came to SiriusPoint six months after the merger of Sirius and Third Point Re. It was a very interesting time, as the company was looking to integrate after the merger, and we had a number of finance and other processes that we had to integrate across the group. What I learned quickly was that it was a merger of more than two companies. The legacy entities were utilizing multiple ledger systems. I joke that I probably learned more in the 15 months of the implementation than I did in the 15 years prior to that because I got great insight into the business and the operations of the two insurance companies and their subsidiaries. And that experience in the implementation gave me broader insight into the company and then helped me prepare for my role as chief accounting officer.

Navarro: What role have you played in implementing technology within your organization?

Cabat: I was one of the leads on the general ledger implementation, but like with Workday, it’s a broad system, so it involved integrating with other subprocesses, whether it be investments, our treasury system, which is now housed within Workday, and our data warehouse, which houses our underwriting results. So I got broad experience in understanding the technology and processes used across the globe, and what I learned is that we had a number of different and disparate processes. So what we decided to do was use this finance transformation and the Workday implementation as a key part of it to integrate our processes and systems and make it a more unified process across the globe. As you mentioned, we operate in Bermuda, New York, Stockholm, and London, but also operate in other branches across the globe. So we need to be able to meet our group goals, but also local regulatory reporting requirements to those locations.

Navarro: What’s your experience been, aligning that technology with some of your organizational goals?

Cabat: Those two things are synonymous or inseparable, however you want to put it. As I said, we use this financial transformation as a catalyst for our merger. We had operations across the globe. We had duplicative resources across the globe. And now we’re able to operate as one finance organization, whether it be somebody in New York supporting the London operations, London supporting Stockholm, however you want to cut it, it’s been great for us because we’re able to now manage those ebbs and flows of the workflow across the globe and be more efficient in our resources and our people. And that allows people, when they’re more efficient, to do more interesting analytical type procedures versus the prototypical bookkeeping and accounting, which is what I grew up with. But people want to do more and more and learn more about the technology. So this single finance system has helped us achieve that goal.

Navarro: It sounds like you’re finding new ways to support the business with this technology. 

Cabat: Absolutely. We now have real-time reporting on certain items like expenses. We also have cut some of our processes in half the time. If we had a question that would come from our international operations, with time zones just being a challenge, we didn’t have access to their local systems. Now I can do preliminary research, ask a question, help make the process for resolving issues much more smooth than it was in the past. Processes that took a week now take a day or two at most.

Navarro: What does collaboration look like across departments throughout the organization? You mentioned different geographic locations. And what effect has technology had on collaboration?

Cabat: Obviously, within finance, we’re more collaborative, as you mentioned. But even the other parts of the organization now have a more user-friendly tool that they have access to their information. And they have the ability to trust but verify. They have access to look at their invoices real time versus waiting for a report from finance or treasury or whoever it may be. So I think it helps them, as they manage their departments internally, have better insight into how they're performing.

Navarro: Speaking broadly, what pain points were you looking to address with these technology investments?

Cabat: We were looking to increase our speed to close, having better information across the group, and more collaboration. As I mentioned, it was a merger, and one of the legacy entities had four of its own ledger systems, in addition to the other side of the merger. Now it’s just increased transparency, consistency, and process. And that helps us as an organization take the next step and be more efficient.

Navarro: Could you talk a little bit more about the processes that you’ve been able to automate and how you’re reinvesting that time, the staff hours that you're saving?

Cabat: Absolutely. Off the top of my head, two key areas have become immensely more efficient in the first year after our Workday implementation. Our bank reconciliation process happens within days and it happens across the globe. We have centers of excellence which have been able to handle this regardless of where you’re sitting because of that increased transparency and also our consolidation process, a process that used to take a week, sometimes a week at best, now takes a day or two. And that enables us to have a real-time grip on results. And if there’s an issue, we’re identifying it early on. And as I’ve learned, nothing ever goes perfectly. So the ability to identify that issue on day four or five of close is a lot different than day 12 or 13.

Navarro: You mentioned reducing the time to close. What does that look like in your organization?

Cabat: Our time to close has gone down from about 20 days to about 10 for the financial statement close process. Our underwriting close is a little bit different, but from our pure consolidation and expenses and banking, we’ve cut that in half. And we, honestly, still have some more room to grow and continue to improve it. And we think it’s really feasible in the next year.

Navarro: Can you talk about the broader implications that the technology has had for your company? What are the benefits in broad terms?

Cabat: Benefits are just increased transparency. Our goal ultimately is to provide a good product to our customers and our clients. And with real-time information and transparent information on a timely basis, our business leaders can take that information, help price our products better, help manage our internal expenses better, which then help us be an efficient, effective, profitable entity, which helps our shareholders. The better information will help our clients as we price things more effectively and efficiently. So it helps everybody across the board.

Navarro: I’ve been reading recently about challenges in recruitment and retaining of finance and accounting personnel, talented staff people, talented staff. Has the technology had an effect on your ability to recruit or retain talent?

Cabat: I think it absolutely has. When you tell somebody coming in for an interview that our close process takes 20 to 25 days, that’s probably off-putting to them. Now it’s 10 days, and with room to grow, we’ll have more opportunities to perform analytical business partner-type procedures for the rest of the organization, which makes it that more appealing to people who want to come into the organization or want to stay. We have now created this efficiency within our core finance group that people are taking different roles in the organization because they’ve learned information from our ledger system that they can now help manage the business in ways that we didn't have the bandwidth to in the past.

Navarro: It sounds like the technology itself is creating opportunities for people on your staff in your organization.

Cabat: Absolutely. As I said, they have better insight into the information. They’re learning more. We have somebody who took a role in our Treasury and Capital Planning Group because they learned how to use the system and they are now a valuable business asset to the rest of the organization.

Navarro: Given the pace of change that we’ve seen occur over the past few years, how do you feel about your organization’s agility and ability to handle change in the future?

Cabat: We’ve learned a lot from this finance transformation, and it’s made us more adaptive to change. Change has become a normal part of our organization as a finance team, whereas in the past, it was a big, scary thing. Now change is going to happen. It’s every day. You tell somebody that we’re going to implement something new, a new feature in whatever project it is. It might be Workday. It might be another subledger or other data feed that we use. We’re used to it now. We’ve learned how to manage that change, which makes us more productive as a company.

Navarro: One of the other things I’ve been reading about is how finance leaders these days need more than just number skills. So how do you go about creating an environment where the members of your organization continue to grow and embrace technology and sort of lean into that change that is always around the corner?

Cabat: I couldn’t agree more. I mean, numbers are the backbone of what we do, but at the same point, it’s learning how to learn and learn a new skill, right? Getting the team to understand that it’s not the IT team that handles the system on its own, which is the way it used to be. Now it’s, “I can do this, and I can create a report that can be helpful to my own day-to-day, but how can I then roll this out to other people in the organization?’ And that’s what people find interesting and keeps them interested in the work and the jobs that they do.

Navarro: How do you envision where you would like your organization to be? And how are you taking steps to move in that direction?

Cabat: If you ask me where we’re going to be in five years—I don’t know the numbers specifically—but I think we’re going to be a much larger organization, and that’s going to be supported by the financial infrastructure that we’ve built and the ability to adapt to changes in the business. If we exit a line of business, if we acquire a company, if we sell a company, making the team able to handle those changes through the information technology that we have and the collaboration across the group, that’s what's going to be most important. I always tell people, “We’re not saving lives on a day-to-day basis, but our ability to change is going to be crucial to help us grow and be ready to change.” I think we came from organizations that didn’t need to change for years, and now we’re realizing we need to grow, and we need to use that technology as the backbone for that.

Navarro: What sort of trends are you seeing within your industry? Are you seeing challenges widely across your peers and yourselves?

Cabat: We’re no different than most insurance companies or reinsurance companies. We’re looking to manage expenses, be more efficient. That’s the number one thing because if we were more efficient in our expenses, we can provide a more reasonably priced product to our customers, and that helps us be competitive. So it’s this ongoing cycle of, “How can we be more efficient?” And that’s something that Workday has allowed us to do. We have this global footprint that is now managed in fewer locations, and we’re still operating, from a legal perspective, in the same places. But we now can serve centrally through one finance team, so that’s been very helpful for us. And I think we’ll continue to be that way.

Navarro: Evan, thank you so much for being here.

Cabat: Oh, thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Navarro: Appreciate your time. We’ve been speaking with Evan Cabat, chief accounting officer at SiriusPoint. Remember to follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And remember, you can find our entire catalog at workday.com/podcasts. I’m your host, Bruno Navarro, and I hope you have a great workday.