Ismaning, November 10, 2021 – The consulting company m3 management consulting GmbH, which is part of the msg group of companies, takes a stake in INTENSE AG. The medium-sized software company is considered one of the leading providers of IT implementations for the utility and energy industry. The investment will take effect on January 1, 2022. The aim of the cooperation is to combine the competences of both companies to assist their mutual customers in determining and implementing a future-proof IT architecture.

End-to-end consulting for customers from the utility industry

The strategic partnership enables an expansion of the delivery capacity for the utility and energy sector. At the same time, both companies equally benefit from the competence of their partner: INTENSE expands its delivery capacity with the strategic consulting expertise and agile change management of m3 management consulting. Through the cooperation, m3 in turn expands its offering with the SAP solution expertise for billing and operational systems for utility companies. The cooperation includes joint market development, but also the joint development of products for the utility industry.

For customers from this sector, this means that they will benefit from a holistic offering: In the future, they will receive industry-savvy advice from a single source, from strategy to the necessary change management, process consulting to solution implementation. “Through our cooperation with INTENSE, we are pleased to offer our customers a solution for their future challenges and to introduce a sustainable IT architecture for the utility industry,” explains Michael Dusch, managing director of m3 management consulting GmbH.

“Through the m3 or msg partnership, we can now not only guarantee even more secure planning of small and large projects but also flexibility in an increasingly complex environment. This allows us to further secure and expand the competitiveness of our customers, now and in the future," explains Michael Heinze, member of the executive board of INTENSE AG.

Insurers worldwide exchange views on future challenges and opportunities for the insurance industry at inscom 2021

9/28/2021 - Under the motto "Rethinking Insurance - TURN VISION INTO VALUE," msg presented a new edition of the insurance conference munich (inscom) on September 20 and 21. For the first time, the major industry event was held in hybrid format. This meant that around 150 decision-makers from the insurance industry were guests at the Hilton Munich Park Hotel while up to 440 spectators from 38 countries took part in the event virtually. The focus of the two days was on the future of the insurance industry with regard to the major trends of today and tomorrow  – including cloud, platforms and ecosystems.

msg board members Rolf Kranz, Dr. Aristid Neuburger and Dr. Jürgen Zehetmaier kicked off the event with a three-part keynote address. Moderator Cristián Gálvez began by asking about the global drivers and their impact on the insurance industry. For Dr. Jürgen Zehetmaier, digitalization accelerated by Corona and the increased demands for sustainability and corporate social responsibility are factors that have gained in importance. These two topics in particular have fundamentally changed customer requirements for insurance companies, their offerings and IT systems. "For the industry, this means above all that the efficiency of IT systems can be significantly increased and thus meet dynamic customer expectations," Zehetmaier said. "The insurance industry therefore continues to hold high potential for automation and optimization.”

msg.Marketplace launched as one of the first B2B marketplaces for the insurance industry

Dr. Aristid Neuburger complemented Zehetmaier's contribution with further technological aspects and the need for new, digital business models: "Connected lifestyles are becoming possible, working in the cloud the standard. To accompany and support our customers in the digital transformation as msg, we have founded a new business unit, msg digital," said Neuburger. Through this unit, the msg group is channeling all competences so as to offer a comprehensive range of solutions and to be able to support customers end-to-end in the entire transformation process - from initial management consulting on the objectives to transformation consulting to the corresponding products and implementation.

Neuburger also addressed the increased relevance of platforms and digital B2B marketplaces in the insurance environment. In this context, he announced the launch of msg.Marketplace. This is one of the first marketplaces for the insurance industry and is currently features the first services from the areas of claims handling and input/output management. The offering will be successively expanded over the coming months – besides digital services from the msg group, also with digital services from partner companies.

Accompanying statutory health insurers in the healthcare ecosystem

Rolf Kranz continued the topic of platforms and ecosystems, addressing the special role of the "healthcare" ecosystem. This ecosystem comprises a large number of market participants whose role models are changing. Sector boundaries between the individual players are breaking down, which, on the one hand, creates more competition. On the other hand, however, the players are increasingly forced to work together in order to be successful. "The health ecosystem should be understood as an aggregate of different ecosystems," Kranz said. "The question remains as to how, for example, health insurers position themselves in this context – as a service partner, product provider or, in fact, as an orchestrator? As msg, we aim to support them holistically and in partnership - from implementation to strategic orchestration of ecosystems.”

Prof. Dr. Norbert Lammert provides an impressive conclusion

The keynote address was followed by various presentations on related topics by the big names in the industry. For example, Dr. Alexander Vollert, Chairman of the Executive Board of AXA Konzern AG, devoted his keynote to the question "Why the world is getting more complex and insurance is getting simpler". Another keynote on "Market development in life insurance" followed the next day by Dr. Alexander Wimmer, Chairman of the Executive Board of Allianz Lebensversicherungs-AG. Also noteworthy was the speech by Jens Ringel, Managing Director of Versicherungsforen Leipzig. He presented exclusive insights into the recently published study "Claims Management 2025 - Strategies and Fields of Action for the Claims Ecosystem". Other highlights were the two podium discussions on the topics of "Platforms and Ecosystems in the Insurance Industry" and "The Insurance Industry's Path into the Cloud". A thought-provoking conclusion was also provided by this year's special guest, Prof. Dr. Norbert Lammert. In his closing speech, the former German Bundestag President addressed the major global challenges facing Germany and Europe.

Munich/Heidelberg, October 8, 2021. SAS is a global, leading provider of solutions for analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), and msg, one of the largest German consulting and IT companies, are expanding their long-term collaboration for financial institutions to include the area of anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC). The aim of this partnership is to now be able to offer especially medium-sized and small financial institutions an AML solution that is specially tailored to this segment.

This way, customers in the financial service sector obtain high-performance software and comprehensive consulting for the optimization and further development of their AML strategy inside and outside of Europe. The SAS solution optionally enables an easy connection to an AI-supported analysis of transaction data and thus embodies the next generation of financial crime analytics. The customer also has the choice and can opt for an on-premise or cloud-based approach.

Frank Schlottmann, member of the board of directors at msg: “We are looking forward to expanding our collaboration with SAS. This will enable us to enhance AML offerings in the interest of our customers and future proof the IT and business strategies of our customers.”

“msg’s expertise convinced us. Together with our technology, this creates a unique combination for our customers in the financial sector. We have been addressing the enterprise section for many years. Within the scope of the new partnership, we are now creating a ready-to-use solution from which also smaller and medium-sized financial institutions can benefit," says Kai Fahlenbock, member of the management at SAS DACH.

Comprehensive consulting and implementation from a single source

SAS is thus continuing its strategy of offering end-to-end consulting from a single source while strengthening its partner network. Fahlenbock continues: “Customers want a provider that understands their needs and doesn't just supply software. With msg as a strong partner in the areas of AML and KYC, we can deliver a complete business process and further expand our integrated approach.”

In 2019, SAS announced an investment of more than a billion US dollars in AI, including training programs and consulting services. These are designed to prepare executives and data scientists alike for the digital future. With this financial commitment, SAS is strengthening its sound AI technology base, which includes advanced analytics, machine learning, customer onboarding, deep learning, natural language processing and computer vision.

BENSHEIM, 09 September 2021 – Global analytics software provider FICO announced today a partnership agreement with international consulting and IT company msg group to support and resell FICO’s financial crime compliance and fraud products throughout Europe, Middle East and Africa. msg will offer businesses using FICO® Siron® Anti-Financial Crime Solutions consulting services on financial crime compliance, managed services for Siron solutions and governance services, including AML/KYC governance reports, FIU consultations, stress/effectiveness reviews and forensic investigations.

With the product "msg.ProfileMap", msg is participating in the research project "AI at the Service of Diversity" (KIDD) of the German Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (BMAS). The aim of the project is to develop standardized processes and criteria for the fair, non-discriminatory use of human-centered, AI-based systems in an operational context.

Eight companies and partner organizations are part of the KIDD consortium, which is implementing the research project over a period of three years (until September 2023). msg is one of them and is testing the personnel planning system msg.ProfileMap within a learning and experimentation space. This is an AI-based system that uses natural language understanding to check employees for their skills, potential and availability. Based on this, it enables optimized project and offer matching and thus an optimization of project assignments and workloads. In the course of the project, msg is further developing the product with financial support from the BMAS under the umbrella of the “Initiative New Quality of Work” (Initiative Neue Qualität der Arbeit (INQA)) and is gaining significant experience in order to eliminate discriminatory biases.

"Diversity panel" tests systems for discrimination potential

To prevent the potential of discrimination in used data, it is important to accompany and control the processes when introducing and using digital systems. For this, it is crucial to consider different perspectives and to actively involve people with diverse backgrounds in the process development of systems. To this end, a key task for each of the research projects is to pilot and test the processes of the system with the involvement of a "diversity panel." This panel is made up of as diverse a group of employees and experts as possible. The experience gained from this will serve as the basis for standardized processes and criteria that can also be applied in other operational contexts and issues relating to digital and AI-based systems.