Innovation

Challenge: using digital technology to close the gap between policyholders and traditional pension funds.

Challenge: making a monolithic core banking system modular and scalable in order to equip it for the future.

From opportunistic APIs to an open banking strategy

Challenge: we wanted to found a start-up that made it easy to book individual trips.

Challenge: making a leading insurance company’s self-service offers competitive.

Challenge: a new digital platform for external asset managers needs to efficiently cover all existing and future requirements, including regulations.

For many Swiss, the regular AHV and pension fund pensions will not be sufficient to enable them to live as well after retirement as before (annual pensions have fallen by almost 9% in real terms since 2005, see Figure 1). Although it would make sense to voluntarily put money into the pension fund, the...

Do you know how much more or less money you will have at your disposal after retirement? It's not easy to calculate: you need AHV and pension fund data, you need to take tax effects into account, and it takes time because it takes two to four weeks for a statement of your individual AHV account to be delivered.

Companies often find it difficult to reduce the size of their shadow IT. Can digital robots help? Our latest blog article shows a possible approach.

Digital Robotics — also known as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) — is a new technology with the potential to radically increase business process productivity by eliminating repetitive manual work and media breaks. At the same time it improves data quality by executing processes more consistently than humans.

The Swiss retirement provision is a complex system. It is difficult for individuals to find out how much money they will have at their disposal after retirement. To change this, Acrea has launched the OpenPK initiative.

Whether in a private or business context, the importance of digital customer services is growing. However, banks are not yet positioned to offer all central processes digitally in an automated manner. We show an example of how this could work.

How do new digital offerings influence user behavior? We are confronted with this question again and again in our projects. Web or app analytics can be used to create targeted analyses of the usability of digital offerings. This provides a good analysis of the impact of changes in the user journey or the features offered. However, this approach falls short when it comes to the holistic analysis of customer relationships and customer behavior. Here, further data is needed.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is on the rise - also in travel. We spoke with Manuel Hilty from nezasa.com about the possibilities of using AI today. Nezasa is a specialist for travel planning and was awarded "Best Tour Operating Platform 2020" by Travolution for its innovative products.

APIs have long been viewed through technical glasses only and have been seen as an IT department responsibility. But in the course of digitalization and the new cloud era, more and more customers are asking whether a service can also be used via APIs. What are the specific characteristics of an API? Is an API necessary? And if so, what makes an API successful?

With a well-designed API, service providers can stand out from their competitor’s products and be more successful in the market. To design APIs well, the right approach and some adjustments in the company are necessary.

Today marks the beginning of a new chapter for Acrea: highly experienced digitalization expert and transformation manager Stephan Odermatt is joining the company as a partner, opening up new avenues for us and our clients.