HSCS’s journey to a digital treasury
The treasury team at Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) enhanced its strategic support to the enterprise by using data to advance HCSC’s business initiatives and priorities.
The scale of the $50bn operation of Chicago-based health insurance giant HCSC previously involved a complex system of multiple independent platforms including cash management, short- and long-term forecasting, investment management, corporate acquisitions, cash and investment accounting, and treasury systems.
By using data to analyse the effectiveness of financial decision making, the treasury team was able to bring greater value to the business and become a stronger strategic partner to the organisation.
Treasury-led transformation
To enable real-time financial health analyses of the business, treasury’s executive leadership designated a task force, which, over the span of three years, carried out a strategic mission to reimagine treasury and create a data-driven organisation through a comprehensive digital transformation.
The key to this strategic approach was to develop a Treasury Enterprise & Analytics Reporting (TEAR) system which included the development of a data warehouse, an in-house API-enabled framework to integrate and unify external data sources, an in-house business intelligence solution and an automated system for visualisation and reporting.
By employing reporting platforms, analytics software and database management software, the TEAR system was able to centralise all treasury data within connected business intelligence platforms to perform visual analysis of the data. TEAR transformed 20 unconnected platforms – including a treasury management system, multi-bank reporting, an investment accounting system, ERP, and an accounting hub, among others – into a true system of intelligence and insight.
Meeting strategic objectives
With the harmonisation of these systems, leadership now possesses more efficient data to help drive real-time strategic decisions. Additionally, the treasury team has 100% visibility across the connected platform including to its subsidiaries.
This project allowed the treasury team to sustain optimized working capital levels at a much lower percentage of overall liquidity reserves despite the looming financial impact at the height of the pandemic.
Analyses now can be made in the same day and near real-time with the capacity to perform multiple cash forecasts in a day. This has saved thousands of hours across treasury teams HCSC’s CFO now has the financial controls to reposition the organisation within a rapidly changing and volatile healthcare sector to better serve customers and members.
HCSC won the EuroFinance Treasury Excellence award in the digital transformation category and will be speaking at the EuroFinance Global Treasury Americas West Coast conference in San Francisco in March 2023.