New SAP Business Unit to Focus on FSI Sector Unveiled

A new SAP business unit created in partnership with private portfolio investor Dediq will focus on innovations dedicated to the FSI sector.

SAP has been providing industry-leading solutions and services to companies in the Finance Sector Industry (FSI) for quite a while now– with over 80% of the top 1,000 banks and insurers as SAP customers. In February, the software company’s indisputable presence in the FSI space has been reaffirmed by the international research organisation Center for Financial Professionals (CeFPro), recognising SAP as Leader in both core banking/back-end systems and accounting and treasury management in the Fintech Leaders 2021 Report. 

CeFPro Managing Director Andreas Simou stressed that being part of the global Fintech Leaders 2021 Report means that SAP’s initiatives in the sector are strongly recognised. He explained:

“The votes cast by the industry in the survey, voting SAP best in accounting and treasury and also in core banking categories, also helped propel their overall position in the ecosystem by several places in the top 20.”

Advancing SAP Business in the FSI Sector

Advancing SAP’s position in the FSI space, the tech company has formed a strategic alliance with Dediq GmbH, an entrepreneurial investor focused on information technology and digital businesses. Pending regulatory approval, the partnership is set to establish a dedicated FSI unit that will be jointly owned by the two German companies to cater to the needs of the rapidly evolving banking and insurance industry.

SAP CEO Christian Klein explained that financial services remain a key industry for SAP and that the company is reinforcing its commitment to the market through this recent development. He said:

“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.” 

Dediq is said to invest over €500 million to the FSI Unit, which will receive support from both SAP and Dediq for funding, technology, development expertise, and necessary connection to the partners’ ecosystem. As part of the aggressive strategy, the new FSI Unit will centre on digital and cost-effective innovations in core FSI areas such as commercial lending, retail banking, core insurance as well as insurance finance, and bank management. The new solutions will be part of SAP’s industry cloud solutions based on SAP technologies and applications such as SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP Business Technology Platform.

Luka Mucic, Member of the Executive Board at SAP SE, acknowledged the great opportunity in the FSI market. He detailed:

“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.”

Gaining Support

Pending antitrust approval, the new FSI Unit is expected to be in place in the second half of 2021. In anticipation of the launch, some of SAP and Dediq’s customers and early-adopter partners such as Google, Microsoft, EY, Vast Bank, and Berlin have already expressed their support to the SAP FSI strategy.

“We are excited to partner with SAP’s FSI Unit to deliver AI and ML-based innovations for financial services customers. Google Cloud and SAP have a deep partnership to help financial services businesses digitally transform, including delivering capabilities to scale-out SAP S/4HANA for Financial Products Subledger on Google Cloud. Our collaboration with SAP’s FSI Unit will expand on this partnership, ultimately helping us deliver technology and value to banks, insurance providers, fintechs, and more, at global scale,” said Rob Enslin, President at Google Cloud.

“Thanks to SAP, we were able to begin our transformation journey with customer preferences in mind. Their platforms give us the confidence and capabilities to better serve our customers today and into the future. In this fast-changing environment, banks need more than strong and reliable technology. Partners should offer flexible engagement models to enable co-innovation and agile execution. It is great to see that SAP’s FSI Unit will focus on what matters most to us – critical, industry-specific solutions we need to run our business and to stay relevant. Vast Bank is looking forward to collaborating closely with SAP’s FSI Unit to drive SAP industry solutions into the US market,” shared Brad Scrivner, President and CEO of Vast Bank.

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