Leading European insurance firm transforms online services with Azure
If P&C Insurance is a leading property and casualty insurance company in the Nordic and Baltic regions of Europe with approximately 3.6 million customers. Keeping content and services up to date in its Baltic web portals had become an increasingly burdensome task, and If P&C Insurance realized that it was time for a technology refresh.
Online sales were expanding by up to 20 percent each year, and more than 60 percent of the traffic was from mobile devices. To improve flexibility and speed-to-market, the company is migrating its portals from on-premises to the Microsoft Azure platform. The company has cut deployment time from two weeks to less than five minutes and gained a faster, more agile platform for responding to marketplace trends.
Insurance is nearly as old as commerce itself, dating back to at least 3,000 B.C., when Chinese merchants devised strategies to distribute cargo and minimize shipping risk. Over the centuries, enterprising business leaders have devised new insurance products and ways to sell them, reflecting the technology advances of each era. In the twentieth century, the invention and mass production of the automobile became a catalyst for change, as insurance companies began vying for customers with increasingly competitive services. In 1956, car insurance data was stored on a computer for the first time, and in 1980 customer service was delivered over the telephone. Today, firms like Sweden’s If P&C Insurance look for innovative ways to sell services online and through mobile devices.
Keeping online services current
A leading property and casualty insurance company in Europe’s Nordic and Baltic regions, If P&C Insurance has approximately 3.6 million customers. The company serves eight countries online, providing each with its own self-service portal. However, keeping content and services up to date had become increasingly burdensome, and If P&C Insurance realized that it was time for a technology refresh. “We faced a challenge addressing all the latest trends for responsive web design and releasing product changes quickly,” says Janis Kesteris, Head of the Baltic IT Unit at If P&C Insurance. “Managing the portals was also quite challenging and time-consuming.”
Part of the problem was that the portals for the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia each ran on separate technology platforms. The If P&C Insurance IT team wanted a centralized solution for all three sites, which together served approximately 300,000 customers. To further simplify management, the company also wanted to give local marketing teams and other business users the ability to update content without having to ask for help from IT. Kesteris says, “We wanted to help speed time-to-market for people in charge of Internet sales and focus on our own development backlog.”
In addition, If P&C Insurance wanted to improve the user experience for its growing number of customers who were increasingly accessing information with mobile devices. Kesteris notes, “Internet sales through our portals are growing by up to 20 percent each year, and more than 60 percent of the traffic is already coming from mobile devices.”
Finding a more flexible, scalable platform
To gain better flexibility and optimize IT operations, If P&C Insurance looked at a variety of cloud solutions including Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. Ultimately, the company chose Azure. “We had worked closely with Microsoft in the past on other projects, and we were using Microsoft development tools,” says Valdis Zobela, System Architect at If P&C Insurance. “It was a natural choice to go with Azure.”
Besides his team’s use of Microsoft technologies, including the Microsoft Visual Studio development system, the openness of the Azure platform was important too. “We want to be able to select the optimum solution for any task, including open source libraries,” he says. “For example, our ad pages are mostly based on open source technologies, including PHP and MySQL, and we can run those on Azure.”
If P&C Insurance is taking advantage of multiple platform-as-a-service offerings including Azure App Services to host portals, Azure SQL Database, and Azure Storage. The company is also using Azure Redis Cache to ensure optimal performance as traffic increases, and Azure Traffic Manager for load balancing. Zobela says, “We’re very happy with Azure Redis Cache, because we can just use it and forget about management, installation, and configuration. “
Azure Active Directory provides single-sign-on capability across the entire infrastructure, and the company plans to implement Azure CDN for content delivery. Currently, the company has migrated Estonia’s portal entirely to Azure and is moving forward with Lithuania and Latvia. The company uses a content management system so that business users can make changes without involving IT.
The cloud platform integrates with multiple line-of-business technologies including local banking, government IDs, and car registry systems to enable highly secure and seamless insurance payment and management. Kesteris says, “If you own or lease a car, all of your data is automatically provided in a portal.”
Cutting release time from two weeks to under five minutes
The portal provides a wide range of insurance services, including automobile, travel, home, and even pet insurance. The company also plans to update online claims processing. The If P&C Insurance development team reports that integrating with new data sources and providing new services are much easier than before. “From a development point of view, we took a big step toward a more DevOps style,” says Zobela. “It was very easy to set up a test environment on Azure. We just compile code, push it to the GitHub repository in the cloud, and it deploys automatically whenever it’s needed. Compared to working on-premises, it’s a huge difference.”
“We can adjust our product offerings in response to competitor activities or campaigns and release changes within five minutes,” adds Kesteris. “Before, our release cycle was at least two weeks. We can release new functionality even during business hours and everything keeps running smoothly.”
Gaining low-risk innovation
“We have always been known as a modern, technology-focused company. In the insurance business, everything is about how you handle information,” says Henrihs Kigelis, Head of IT Operations and Infrastructure Department, If P&C Insurance. “With Azure, we can stay innovative and try out the latest things—such as Internet sales—quicker and with relatively lower risk.”
The company looks forward to future enhancements, including the possibility of using Internet of Things technologies to connect devices. Kesteris says, “For example, we are thinking about collecting telemetry data from cars.”
He concludes, “Flexibility is the key word to describe what we’re doing with Azure. We can do a lot of things without having to make costly investment in physical infrastructure. Instead, we can easily expand and reduce cloud infrastructure as needed.”
Read more on the Microsoft Banking & Capital Markets and Insurance blogs.
