How HAPEV Unified Pension Workflow Automation and Compliance with Camunda

HAPEV needed to bring process documentation, execution, and governance together in a single platform, without losing the auditability, regulatory rigor, or domain-specific flexibility that pension administration demands.

HAPEV is not a typical financial institution. As a social-profit cooperative, it exists to serve the pension beneficiaries it represents, not to generate returns. Every euro saved in administrative overhead translates directly into higher benefit payments for members.

That mission plays out against a demanding operational backdrop: over 1.4 million pension obligations, thousands of distinct benefit plans, long-running cases, and a regulatory environment that does not forgive gaps in documentation or control.

For years, the underlying administration system had done its job, but it was showing its age. Workflows ran through forms and technical data changes. The actual process knowledge, what steps to take, in what order, under what conditions, lived not in the system but in external documents and team understanding. That is a fragile foundation for an operation built on precision and accountability. When regulators ask why something happened, "it is in a separate document" is not a satisfying answer.

HAPEV needed a different architectural approach: one where the process description and the process execution were the same thing.

The decision to build MARINA, HAPEV's new central administration platform, came with a fundamental question: build a workflow engine or buy one? Workflow execution is not a core competency in pension administration, so HAPEV evaluated external platforms that could handle complex, long-running, regulated processes reliably and integrate into MARINA as the orchestration layer.

Camunda stood out for a specific reason: it treats BPMN not just as a modeling notation, but as an executable control model. The same diagram that describes a process is the process. There is no gap between what is designed and what runs, no translation layer where intent gets lost, no separate documentation that drifts out of sync with reality.

Built-in operational and analytics capabilities in Camunda gave HAPEV visibility not just into individual cases but into process performance across the platform, supporting the kind of evidence-based improvement that a regulated environment requires.

That alignment between documentation and execution became the foundation of the whole approach. HAPEV models every pension workflow in BPMN, including benefit approvals, status reports, beneficiary communications, and compliance checkpoints, and those models run directly in Camunda. Every process instance leaves a complete trace. Every step, every decision, every approval is captured automatically.

The composable architecture also mattered for a regulated environment. Camunda's support for self managed deployment gave HAPEV a credible exit strategy, a genuine consideration under frameworks like Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), where vendor dependency is a risk that needs to be managed explicitly.

The Camunda team played an active role through the rollout and implementation, helping validate architectural decisions and contextualize best practices for HAPEV's regulated use case. That partnership shaped how the platform was deployed.

HAPEV's team can now see exactly where any case stands, at any moment, without asking anyone. For an organization managing over a million pension obligations across thousands of benefit plans, with cases that run for weeks and must meet strict regulatory standards, that kind of visibility is operationally significant.

Early outcomes following the move to Camunda include:

Approximately 160 orchestrated processes and sub-processes running in production, replacing legacy workflows that had relied on forms and external documentation.

Case volume growth from 300 to 400 cases per year in 2020 to over 1,000 today, with projections reaching 3,000 per month, achieved with only a modest increase in headcount.

Real-time visibility into every case, so beneficiary inquiries can be answered with reliable, current-state information and auditors get a complete, queryable trace.

Smooth ISO 27001, ISAE 3402, and ISO 9001 certifications, with positive feedback from auditors.

Iterative, evidence-based process improvement, with statistical anomalies surfacing directly from process data instead of through manual review.

Faster onboarding of new benefit systems, including ones the legacy environment could not support at all.

End-to-end orchestration in MARINA currently covers around 10% of HAPEV's cases, intentionally focused on benefit systems that the legacy environment could not support. That is not a limitation; it is a strategy. By targeting the highest-value gaps first, HAPEV has built a solid foundation while validating the approach in production.

The roadmap points toward 25% end-to-end coverage within the next two years, with Camunda serving as the long-term orchestration layer for all business-critical pension processes. As additional workflows move onto the platform, the benefits compound: more process data, more visibility, faster improvement cycles, and a more resilient foundation for future capabilities, including AI and agentic automation, which will require exactly the kind of governance and auditability that BPMN-based orchestration already provides.