Success Story - New York Life Tax Team

Challenge

Using Excel to handle quarterly and year-end provisions caused headaches for New York Life. Just maintaining the multitude of huge and complex workpapers with innumerable formulas and links was a task in and of itself—as was version control and consolidating. When a massive file linked to separate files crashed, the team lost information in the blink of an eye—a major setback with deadlines looming.

New York Life wanted a sustainable solution to streamline the process and allow them to handle tax booking in-house instead of outsourcing to asset management companies.

Solution

New York Life’s first order of business: connect Corptax accounts to the general ledger and use CSC Corptax^® Data Exchange Manager to import historical data from Excel into Corptax. Next, identify ‘entities’ and ‘lines of business’ in Corptax and determine which adjustments to automate and which to handle with CSC Corptax^® Office workpapers. Lastly, build a journal entry template to upload to their general ledger system easily.

Results

Using standard Corptax reports, the New York Life team helped their business units better understand the provision process. By allowing the system to automate steps, they now:

• Automate 60% of adjustments and accelerate work by using standardized workpapers and letting Corptax Office push and pull data
• Eliminate outsourcing costs by doing monthly and quarterly tax booking for the nonlife insurance companies in-house for the first time
• Cut turn-around time on entries by almost one week—reducing overtime and boosting morale
• Save eight hours every month by automating trial balance import