IFRS 17 Year Two: From Compliance Burden to Investor‑Grade Confidence

Introduction

Two years on from go‑live, many insurers are realising that IFRS 17 compliance arrived with a price tag: longer closes, higher audit effort, and fragile trust in the numbers. Year one was about meeting the letter of the standard at all costs — transition comparatives, disclosure packs, auditor clearance — often delivered through tactical workarounds and manual effort. 

In 2025 the brief has shifted. Boards and investors expect numbers that are audit‑ready, repeatable and comparable across peers. Rating agencies are scrutinising the quality of reported earnings. Regulators want to see controls embedded, not improvised. CFOs are being asked to deliver investor‑grade confidence without enduring month‑end heroics or escalating audit fees. 

The benchmark has moved from “did we comply?” to “can our numbers be trusted quarter after quarter, with the speed and control of a modern finance function?” That answer will determine whether IFRS 17 remains a recurring compliance tax — or becomes a platform for stronger investor confidence and better‑informed capital allocation. While the standard does not change capital requirements, higher confidence in earnings directly supports rating assessments and sharper board decision‑making. 

This article sets out what good looks like two years in, the pressure points still eroding confidence, and the design principles that turn compliance effort into durable advantage. 

The 2025 pressure points 

• Audit confidence is still fragile. Heavy reliance on manual reconciliations and tactical journals means numbers can add up without convincing. The consequence is escalating audit queries, longer close reviews and lingering boardroom uncertainty. 

• Repeatability is not yet secured. Many teams expected the hard yards of year one to deliver a repeatable model. In practice, improvised fixes and extraordinary effort continue each quarter. Timetables are met, but not sustainably. 

• Integration is the missing link. Separation of actuarial and finance data flows creates reconciliation breaks and slows reporting. Each hand‑off adds operational risk and delays credible results. Lack of data lineage and control remains a red flag for rating agencies. 

• The IFRS 17 “tax” persists. Extended close cycles, higher audit fees and teams under strain continue to raise the cost of finance and erode confidence in reported results — making it harder to secure investor trust and act decisively on wider capital management opportunities. 

• Disconnected regimes multiply effort. Treating IFRS 17 in isolation from Solvency II, IFRS 9 or LDTI drives duplicate reconciliations and inconsistent narratives for the board and the market. Mixed signals undermine comparability and increase the cost of compliance. 

What we’ve seen in practice 

Across European programmes a consistent pattern has emerged: day‑one compliance was delivered as a project, not as an operating model change. 

• Transition comparatives have become technical debt. Reconstructing historic cohorts forced pragmatic short‑cuts given legacy system limits. Two years later, the same adjustments are re‑performed every cycle — consuming time and confidence. 

• Group acceleration amplifies pressure. Group timetables often outpace local maturity, leading to tactical mapping layers embedded in planning or consolidation tools. These fracture under pressure: results arrive on time but without transparency or resilience. 

• Parallel frameworks increase duplication. Bolting Solvency II consolidation logic onto IFRS 17 platforms creates overlapping models and mismatched reconciliations. Rather than convergence, insurers face more duplication and audit challenge. 

• Cash‑flow reconciliations remain the bottleneck. Translating actuarial projections into journal‑ready entries is still the leading cause of late adjustments. The gap between models built for risk and systems built for ledgers extends closes and invites audit rework. 

The takeaway: a compliance project will not, by itself, produce a durable operating model. The weaknesses resurface every quarter until the structure is addressed. 

Design principles for durable IFRS 17 

1) Strengthened data foundations 
A controlled data spine that consolidates policy, claims, actuarial and market data — with validation and reconciliation embedded at source — is the foundation for trust. With clear lineage from source to disclosure, audits shorten and investor confidence strengthens. 

2) Integrated actuarial‑to‑finance processes 
The actuarial‑to‑finance bridge must be rules‑driven and systemised, not spreadsheet‑driven. Liability calculations should flow into subledger and GL through governed mappings, reducing late adjustments and aligning actuarial and finance leadership around one set of numbers. 

3) Embedded control and auditability 
Design audit‑readiness into the process: systemised approvals and hand‑offs, automated roll‑forwards, and transparent audit trails back to source. This lowers cost of finance, shortens audits and reduces challenge. 

4) Connection across regimes 
Operate a single control backbone for IFRS 17, Solvency II, IFRS 9 and (increasingly) ESG, eliminating duplication and delivering one version of the truth across regulatory and management reporting. 

What good looks like in 2025 

Leaders are now delivering numbers that are trusted, repeatable and comparable. Systemised reconciliations and transparent lineage shorten audits and cut challenge. Closes are predictable; late adjustments are the exception. Teams spend more time on forward‑looking analysis and less on reconciliation firefighting. Critically, the actuarial‑finance divide narrows: shared assumptions replace duplicated models, improving forecast consistency and decision‑making. 

The benefits are tangible: shorter close cycles, lower audit fees and lower reliance on overtime. Regulatory convergence reduces duplication and presents a single, coherent story to boards and the market. The result is investor‑grade confidence and more decisive capital allocation. 

Revvence point of view (and why our approach lands) 

The gap between leaders and laggards is widening. Insurers still dependent on spreadsheets, duplicated engines and manual fixes are paying a recurring compliance tax — and credibility with investors. By contrast, those who systemise the IFRS 17 operating model are lowering the cost of finance and strengthening market confidence. 

Our experience in banking and insurance — and our Oracle specialism — shapes a practical, accelerator‑led route to maturity: 

• Oracle‑aligned architecture. We design to an enterprise data spine with Oracle IFRS 17 Analyzer, subledger integration and EPM — supporting GMM/VFA/PAA with governed mappings to GL and disclosure. 

• Rules‑driven actuarial‑to‑finance bridge. We eliminate spreadsheet joins between actuarial outputs and finance journals with a governed rules layer and traceable lineage into subledger and GL. 

• Cross‑regime control backbone. We converge IFRS 17, Solvency II and IFRS 9 (and ESG) onto one control framework to remove duplication and present one coherent narrative to boards and rating agencies. 

• Delivery pattern that sticks. We emphasise control design (Task Manager‑style workflows, approvals, roll‑forwards), repeatability, and measurable outcomes (close‑time reduction, audit query reduction). 

Illustrative outcomes we’ve seen:
• A multi‑country insurer eliminated late manual top‑side entries by moving cash‑flow‑to‑journal mapping into a governed rules engine, reducing close by ~1–2 weeks. 
• A regional group aligned Solvency II and IFRS 17 disclosures on a single data spine, cutting duplicate reconciliations and decreasing audit queries across both regimes. 
• A head‑office reporting team replaced spreadsheet‑based catalogues with Oracle Analyzer + EPM alignment, improving transparency for group acceleration. 

Closing thought 

IFRS 17 is a permanent shift in how performance is measured and explained to the market. The decisive question is no longer “did we file?” but “do investors, auditors and boards trust the numbers — every quarter?” Where reporting still relies on manual effort, confidence and credibility suffer and the cost of finance rises. Where processes are repeatable, controlled and connected across regimes, closes are faster, costs are lower and the story to the market is clearer. 

How Revvence helps (diagnose → design → deliver) 

• Diagnose: 4–6 week rapid review of your IFRS 17 close to pinpoint data, mapping and control gaps that drive rework and audit challenge. 

• Design: Target operating model for the actuarial‑to‑finance bridge, data spine and cross‑regime control backbone; measurable benefits case. 

• Deliver: Oracle‑aligned implementation — IFRS 17 Analyzer, subledger integration and EPM — with embedded controls and Task‑Manager‑style workflows. 

• Prove value: Innovation labs and accelerators to test the art of the possible, quantify benefits and stage investment with confidence. 

Insurers who act decisively now will turn IFRS 17 from a recurring cost into a competitive advantage — lowering the cost of finance, strengthening investor‑grade confidence and enabling more decisive capital allocation.