SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) and investment company Dediq GmbH today announced that they have agreed to enter into a partnership in the area of financial services.
To better serve the rapidly changing banking and insurance industry, the two companies will jointly expand SAP’s financial services portfolio with a significant investment in new solutions. These solutions will be based on SAP software and be integrated into SAP’s overall portfolio and product roadmap.
Pending regulatory approval, SAP and Dediq will form a dedicated Financial Services Industry (FSI) Unit, which will be jointly owned by the two companies. Both SAP and Dediq will provide the FSI Unit with the funding, technology, and development expertise, as well as a broad ecosystem of partners necessary to rapidly establish it as a major force in the FSI IT market. Dediq’s investment in the unit will be more than 500 million Euro.
“Through partnering with Dediq, we will significantly increase our support for the digital transformation of customers in the Financial Services Industry and deliver innovative cloud solutions at an accelerated pace that help them transform their business holistically,” said Christian Klein, CEO, SAP SE. “Financial services is a key industry for SAP, and today we not only reiterate but also reinforce our commitment to this market.”
SAP has a long history of success in the FSI market. More than 80% of the top 1,000 banks and insurers are SAP customers. The new FSI Unit will fully focus on accelerated innovation in the area of core banking, core insurance and FSI-specific finance solutions to meet the needs for digital innovation and cost efficiency of financial services customers.
“The FSI market offers a huge opportunity for us,” said Luka Mucic, Member of the Executive Board, SAP SE. “To unleash this potential, we will use our unique capability to provide enterprise-grade solutions. Jointly, we will extend our existing FSI portfolio to cover banking and insurance processes end to end. Helping our customers to become more agile through digital business innovation and cloud technology will be front and center for our new FSI Unit. The new unit will be very flexible and customer-centric with full autonomy to set its strategic direction. At the same time, it will be a strong member of the SAP family. Customers will benefit from SAP’s leading technology and the FSI Unit’s agility and focus on their specific needs.”
As part of its industry cloud portfolio strategy to thoroughly serve its 25 industries with tailored solutions, SAP has forged a number of partnerships. This latest one with Dediq marks a further milestone in the implementation of this strategy. SAP customers can expect the same high-quality engagement, with new capabilities now made possible by the new FSI Unit. The new solutions will cover the full cycle of banking and insurance operations processes, and help meet regulatory requirements. They will be based on integrated data and provide an opportunity to move FSI processes to the SAP Business Technology Platform in the cloud. For example, lending solutions for banks will cover all stages from origination and credit risk assessment to re-financing and bank management, with all related data kept in one place. This will significantly reduce IT cost and complexity.
“We strongly believe in the strategy of the new FSI Unit,” said Matthias Tomann, Managing Partner, Dediq. “We see the future of FSI software solutions in the cloud. SAP’s platform has unrivalled potential when it comes to supporting the core operations of large-scale businesses like banks and insurers as well as new emerging ecosystems. Making this vision a reality in financial services is highly exciting to us.”
SAP will continue to sell and support SAP solutions for enterprise information management and line-of-business solutions and SAP customers will remain SAP customers. The new FSI Unit will focus its investment on core FSI areas such as commercial lending, retail banking, core insurance as well as insurance finance and bank management. The new solutions will be built as part of SAP’s industry cloud solutions, based on SAP technologies and applications such as SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business Technology Platform and others.
“Today’s financial services industry is challenged to balance agility and innovation with risk, resiliency and scale. With this announcement, SAP is responding to the needs of its clients to improve speed of innovation while continuing to provide enterprise-class and mission-critical products and services to the industry,” said Jerry Silva, vice president of IDC Financial Insights.
Pending antitrust approval, the new FSI Unit is expected to be in place in the second half of 2021. Corresponding preparations are scheduled to start in the coming weeks.
Read statements from partners and customers here.
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About Dediq
Dediq is an entrepreneurial investor focused on information technology and digital businesses. Dediq is working together with its portfolio companies to create exceptional products and services. Each Dediq investment is set up separately, independently and with an unlimited time horizon. Dediq is based in Munich. For more information, visit www.dediq.com.
