Focus on… An in-depth look at a key project by Kully and her team

Kully is the global general counsel of the Allianz Technology Group, the shared service and technology provider to the Allianz Group of companies. Kully’s role is to lead a talented team of globally distributed lawyers and contract managers to provide proactive and pragmatic advice that enables Allianz Technology’s business, protects its assets, and upholds its reputation as a captive provider of services.

Her appointment comes at a time of significant internal transformation in the IT space, namely the launch of a large transformation programme to harmonise and scale IT across the Allianz Group. Its objectives are to increase IT service and delivery quality, enable standardised insurance business models, and improve IT management capabilities globally, confirming Allianz Technology’s position as the single end-to-end IT service provider of the Allianz Group.

Allianz Technology’s legal function is one of the key players enabling this transformation. Kully and her team have designed a two-part contractual framework to underpin the clear separation of IT capabilities into IT demand (comprising all capabilities to be retained by the Allianz group company), and IT supply (comprising all capabilities to be transferred to Allianz Technology). Part one comprises a business transfer agreement appropriately balanced for the intra-group transfer of IT supply-relevant employees, assets (applications) and third-party contracts to a member of the Allianz Technology Group. Part two comprises an IT Supply Outsourcing Agreement (ITSOA) under which each Allianz Group company outsources its IT supply to Allianz Technology (whilst retaining responsibility for its IT demand as part of its retained IT organisation) and Allianz Technology in turn acts as the outsourcing provider of IT services for such group company.

The ITSOA is at arms’ length and adheres to applicable legal, regulatory and tax requirements. It complements the harmonisation sought by the transformation programme by substantially simplifying intra-company contracting for IT services. Firstly, the ITSOA elevates the level at which contracting is done from an individual IT component level to an application level, significantly reducing the number of induvial contracts in circulation. Secondly, it is issued as an Allianz Group contract standard for IT supply following an intensive vetting period with selected Allianz Group companies, so that when implemented across the Allianz Group deviations from the standard are limited to local legal or regulatory requirements or mandatory operational demands. Thirdly, it decouples terms of contractual interest from terms of purely operational or financial significance, limiting the ITSOA itself to essential contractual elements. For example, IT service call-off is no longer via paper-based order agreements, but is rather managed via an integrated SIM tool. In addition, a non-contractual operational manual addresses matters of operational governance and financial processes which were previously handled in the contracts themselves.