“Over the last few years, insurance companies have realized that to have efficient digital processes and offer great services, we must get closer to our customers to better understand their needs. To do that, we need to be able to unlock the power of customer data.”

Patrick Sergysels, Head of Data Management at AG Insurance, is reflecting on how the insurance sector has evolved in recent years. “Typically, insurance companies have fewer direct touchpoints than other financial institutions,” he says, “so we must seize any opportunity to provide personalized, relevant services to each customer.

“Data is an essential component to these customer-centric services,” he adds. “Our aim has been to ensure that data is at the core of everything we do. And to do this, we need an infrastructure in place that can manage vast volumes of data.”

It was soon evident for AG Insurance that its on-prem solution didn’t have the scalability or elasticity required to handle the increasing amount of data. So AG Insurance decided to modernize its operations by migrating to the cloud and creating a powerful end-to-end data platform. “With Microsoft, we’ve really come a long way on our cloud journey.”

An insurance company overcomes on-premises limitations

AG Insurance is the leading insurance company in Belgium. With around 4,500 employees, it offers products such as life insurance, property and casualty insurance, healthcare and pensions. 

“Insurance is an industry in evolution,” says Sergysels of AG Insurance. “Customers now expect intuitive and personalized services, so insurance companies have realized the need to invest in new, innovative solutions to provide those services and build business resilience.”

For AG Insurance, that meant reviewing the on-prem infrastructure and legacy data warehouse. “We didn’t have access to an advanced analytics environment or a standardized data quality process integrated in our legacy data platform,” he adds. “We had recurrent performance issues, and our system didn’t support new types of data such as video and images.”

The on-premises solution lacked the crucial scalability or elasticity required especially during peak times, as the data warehouse architecture was built to refresh only on a monthly basis – and while the platform had been scaled up to support daily updates, it was still not fit for real-time analytics. “In today’s world, a customer would never be satisfied receiving month-old information about their insurance claims. It’s just unimaginable – we had to make drastic changes.”

In order to meet the growing needs of the industry, in 2019 AG Insurance started to investigate how cloud technology could improve business operations.

The journey to automation

“Our focus was on designing a standardized system,” explains Laurent Horion, Data Platform Manager and Migration Project Lead at AG Insurance. “We wanted to modernize our core system and automate as many processes as possible.

"But we couldn’t do this alone," he continues. “We needed a technology leader to help us seamlessly transition our on-prem solution to the cloud and then use it to support data analysis and reporting, providing up-to-date customer information.”

He says that Microsoft and its partner Hexaware were the ideal candidates for the task. “We had already been using various technologies in the Microsoft data stack, as well as on-premises data warehouse functionalities such as Power BI, SSAS and SQL-Server. 

“Most importantly, we loved Microsoft’s vision and willingness to not just roll out services, but also continuously invest in their development,” he adds.

“And we couldn’t wait to become part of that same vision.”

From proof of concept to development

The first step was to build a proof of concept using Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics. AG Insurance implemented an architectural framework using Microsoft Azure Databricks on top of Microsoft Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 to manage its huge volumes of data and support advanced analytics.  

In addition to that, AG Insurance used Azure SQL DB as central repository for the configuration of the data automation framework, and Synapse Dedicated SQL pools as a publication layer for its downstream systems. 

The initiative soon proved beyond successful. “The PoC allowed us to test all the main components of the solution from a usability, integration and scalability perspective,” says Horion. “We were also able to put together some cost estimates, as well as finetune our target architecture.”

That led AG Insurance to the next phase of its project – the development of ETL pipelines using Azure Data Factory to automate data movements and transformations.  

“We then began the process of migrating data and applications from our on-prem solution to our new cloud environment,” says Horion. “Using Microsoft Power BI, we also created a self-service end user zone where business users can benefit from the data we prepare to report on and support their daily business needs.

“Thanks to Hexaware and Microsoft, the development process has been seamless so far.”

Realizing the benefits of a modern cloud environment

First kicked off in 2021, AG Insurance’s migration is now well underway. Having started with the less critical parts of the scope, the company is currently completing the scope migration of one AG Business line. Completion of the deployment is expected for the end of 2023. 

Even though the cloud is still under development, AG Insurance is already experiencing benefits. “We estimate that we’ve been able to reduce running costs by around 25% at constant business volume,” says Sergysels. “And we’ve also reduced time to market for new business projects and reduced the cost of developing new solutions,” he adds. 

Another advantage of the new technology is being able to reduce the elapsed time of batch activities. “Jobs and pipelines that were lasting for 10 hours or more will now execute four to five times faster in the cloud,” says Sergysels.

He also stresses the huge scalability benefits brought about by Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, which is helping to historize “all that is crucially needed in the upper layers to rebuild the history if the requirement pops up,” as well as deal with “workload variations of pipelines to execute via Azure Databricks, Data Factory and Synapse scalability".

But the greatest benefit is the new-found potential to improve user experience and the services provided to customers. “We can innovate in a way we couldn’t before,” explains Sergysels. 

“For example, we will soon be able to use the advanced analytics services provided by the new data platform to analyze the videos and photos that customers upload as evidence of damage to their car or home – and in turn provide them with better services.

“This is all down to the fact that we now have a modern cloud environment that will continue to evolve and won’t buckle under the volume of data we collect.”

The building blocks for future innovation

Now that AG Insurance has built a foundation of technology in the cloud, the possibilities are limitless. “Thanks to Microsoft Azure Services, we have the groundwork in place to further improve operations,” says Sergysels. “For example, we can use Microsoft Purview to scan our environment to ensure metadata is captured as well as to visualize lineage.”

Moving forward, AG Insurance will continue to innovate in customer experience. From using algorithms to direct underwriting to the claim process, to analyzing communication flows, bringing together data from different systems quickly within a single platform can facilitate new innovations. 

“As we continue to evolve, we want to offer new services. Like being able to analyze the sentiment of customers based on their interactions with our touchpoints, such as phone call, email and post,” says Sergysels. “If a customer is especially stressed or displeased, we can help our clerks to adapt our answer to better serve him in his current condition – this takes personalization of services to a whole new level.

“By investing in modernization and embracing the power of data and cloud technology, we now have the foundation in place to explore these innovations.”