Cloud-Core Ledger Rescue Director

The mandate

An insurer’s cloud ERP replacement has consumed two cutover rehearsals without producing a ledger that finance will sign. Policy, claims, reinsurance and actuarial subledgers arrive on incompatible calendars; manual journals conceal transformation defects; and the systems integrator reports interface completion while controllers still cannot trace balances to source events. The defined problem is to recover a decision-ready route to production before the next annual reporting cycle becomes exposed.

The deliverables are a recovery baseline, posting-and-reconciliation control architecture, corrected release sequence, evidence-led cutover plan and executive go/no-go dossier. The work must distinguish configuration defects from bad source semantics, establish ownership for every suspense population, define actuarial-to-ledger tolerances, retire ungoverned journal workarounds and show how statutory, management and group reporting will be regenerated from the converted books.

Four milestones govern six months: by week four, validate the failure anatomy and independent completion estimate; by week ten, secure approval of the redesigned posting controls and prioritised defect burn-down; by week eighteen, complete a representative close rehearsal with reconciled premiums, claims, investments and reinsurance; and by week twenty-six, submit cutover evidence, residual-risk decisions and the operating handover. Invoices follow those milestones.

Acceptance requires the chief financial officer and investment committee to see source-to-ledger lineage for material balances, named disposition for every high-value exception, repeatable close timings, tested rollback triggers and signed accountability across finance, actuarial, technology and the integrator. A nominally green programme dashboard will not qualify: the client must be able to reproduce the evidence pack without consultant intervention and defend each accepted residual risk to audit.

The client provides data dictionaries, journal populations, defect logs, interface specifications, chart-of-accounts decisions, prior rehearsal outputs, vendor statements of work, control catalogues and access to finance and actuarial owners. This engagement excludes system configuration, audit opinion, production approval, integrator procurement and operational ownership of the close; client executives retain those decisions, while disputed assumptions are recorded in the final dossier.

Why this is external work

Programme reporting is organised around technical completion, whereas finance confidence depends on balance integrity and evidence that survives challenge. The integrator cannot independently judge its own remediation forecast, and business teams have normalised manual bridges to protect reporting dates. A specialist outside those incentives is required to reconnect accounting events, technology controls and cutover decisions around one defensible standard of proof.

What you will own

• Reconstruct the end-to-end failure anatomy across source events, transformations, interfaces, posting rules, journals, reconciliations and reported balances.
• Establish a single defect taxonomy that exposes financial magnitude, control consequence, root owner, dependent release and closure evidence.
• Design actuarial, reinsurance, claims and investment-feed tolerances with explicit treatment for timing, currency, aggregation and late adjustments.
• Challenge integrator estimates through configuration inspection, representative data samples, dependency mapping and observed rehearsal performance.
• Direct the evidence agenda for parallel close, rollback readiness, access control, journal governance and statutory-report regeneration.
• Frame go/no-go choices with quantified exposure, reversible options, decision deadlines and accountable executive risk acceptance.
• Transfer the recovery cockpit, reconciliation playbook, residual backlog and next-close operating rhythm to named client leaders.

Candidate qualifications

• Recovered a cloud ERP finance deployment in a multinational insurer after at least one unsuccessful dress rehearsal or cutover.
• Can trace premium, claim, investment, reinsurance and actuarial movements through posting logic into statutory and group balances.
• Has challenged a major systems integrator using observed delivery evidence rather than relying on percentage-complete reporting.
• Built reconciliation and exception controls that finance, technology, actuarial and external audit teams could independently reproduce.
• Has chaired executive cutover decisions where deferral, scope reduction and controlled launch each carried material reporting consequences.
• Leaves behind an operable close-and-control model, not a consultant-owned dashboard or an undocumented collection of reconciliations.

Non-negotiables

• Can work in Zurich during rehearsal and close weeks and complete the scheduled London control-design residency.
• Will disclose relationships with ERP publishers, systems integrators, audit firms, actuarial vendors and insurance technology providers.
• Brings direct composite-insurance ledger conversion experience; generic enterprise ERP programme leadership is insufficient.
• Accepts that production approval remains with client officers and that all unresolved exceptions will be visible to governance.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe the reconciliation break that most changed your decision on an insurance ERP cutover.
2. 49 words maximum. Which evidence would distinguish a posting-rule defect from unreliable actuarial source data?
3. 49 words maximum. How would you challenge an integrator’s green status without taking over its delivery obligations?