Malayan Insurance, one of the Philippines’ largest non-life insurers, has become one of the first in the country to achieve full IFRS 17 readiness — two years ahead of the revised national deadline — through its implementation of the SAS IFRS 17 solution. This positions Malayan as a regional leader in regulatory transformation, turning compliance into a strategic edge.
“Malayan Insurance’s success highlights the pivotal role of advanced analytics in navigating complex regulatory changes such as IFRS 17. Their proactive leadership and commitment to early adoption have not only set a new standard for the Philippine insurance sector but also exemplify how technology serves as a catalyst for transformation, agility, and trust. We are proud to collaborate with a forward-thinking insurer that views compliance not merely as a requirement, but as a strategic driver for innovation,” said Febrianto Siboro, Managing Director for Malaysia, Indonesia, and Philippines at SAS.
Established in 1930, Malayan Insurance operates an extensive network of over 30 branches and service offices across the country. The company’s legacy of forward-thinking leadership and commitment to excellence made it a natural early adopter of the IFRS 17 reporting standard, originally set to take effect in the Philippines on 1 January 2025 before being extended to 2027.
Built for future resilience
The need to overhaul legacy systems, restructure data models was real, as IFRS 17, a new international accounting standard for insurance contracts, requires insurers to fundamentally change how they measure liabilities and recognize revenue from insurance contracts. It replaced the old rules (like IFRS 4) to make financial reports more transparent, comparable, and consistent across companies and countries.
With the implementation of a robust technology platform specially designed to meet the complex standard requirements, it allows key capabilities such as generating accurate and automated cash flow calculations, modelling of the Contractual Service Margin (CSM), and producing audit-ready reports.
Malayan Insurance’s early implementation involved extensive collaboration across finance, actuarial, underwriting and IT teams — a cross-functional effort supported by SAS’s advanced analytics platform. This further enables faster and more reliable reporting to cater to IFRS17, one standard approach, so the various stakeholders – investors, regulators and customers – have greater visibility on the profitability of the insurance company, business risks, or future obligations that may be incurred.
“One of the most complex parts of the project was retrieving and preparing historic data going back to 2018,” said Frederick Pineda, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Malayan Insurance. “Cross-functional effort is needed, with actuarial handling assumptions and cash flow modelling, while IT extracts usable data from legacy systems, and not forgetting the crucial part to work together, identifying the necessary data and assumptions to feed into the solution. Doing this manually would have been near impossible.”
Staying the course despite the deadline shift
“Even though the deadline was extended locally, we chose to stay the course. This wasn’t just about compliance — it was about doing things right, setting the tone for the future, and aligning ourselves with international best practices,” said Pineda. Through this project, Malayan Insurance has strengthened its credibility with regulators and reinforced its leadership in the non-life insurance space.
Strong partnership for precision and transparency
Following a rigorous evaluation of several platforms, Malayan Insurance selected the SAS Solution for IFRS 17 for its model flexibility, auditability, system performance, and responsive post-implementation support.
“We needed a system that could offer detailed traceability — from the raw data to the final figures,” said Pineda. “SAS stood out with its strong functionality, cost-effective implementation, and transparency. It gave us the confidence we needed, especially during user acceptance testing.”
The SAS analytics platform enabled Malayan Insurance’s teams to work from a single source of truth. Implementation partner Financial Risk Group (FRG) played a key role in guiding calibration, model setup and iterative testing to ensure a successful rollout.
“SAS and FRG were with us every step of the way,” Pineda said. “Whenever we encountered issues, they were quick to engage and help us resolve them. That level of support made a real difference.”
Better, faster, smarter financial reporting
With the solution in place, Malayan has dramatically shortened reporting cycles — generating IFRS 17 figures in under 30 minutes with fully traceable outputs. “This started out as an accounting project, but we’re pleased with the added value we’re getting from our SAS solution,” Pineda adds. “The insights we now have will help us make more informed decisions.”
Looking Ahead
Malayan Insurance’s early IFRS 17 implementation is more than a compliance milestone — it is a strategic transformation. As the company continues to evolve its digital capabilities, its partnership with SAS will help drive innovation, agility, and sustained market leadership in the years ahead.
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