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Shigeo Kuwabara & Akiko Horie | AWS Executive Summit 2022


 

(calm tech music) >> Hello everyone. Welcome back to the AWS Cube coverage of Reinvent 2022. I'm John Fur, host of the Cube. We got a great interview segment here co-creating innovation with E.design. We got Shigeo Kuwabara who is with the President and the Chief Executive Officer E.design Insurance, and Akiko Hora Senior Managing Director Financial Services in Japan Inclusion and Diversity Lead at Accenture Japan. Thank you for joining me today. Thanks for coming on the cube. >> You're welcome, You're welcome, Thank you. >> I love this topic. E.design Create co-creating innovation automobile insurance with a product called "&e" It's cloud-based advanced automobile insurance system you guys built and called Safe Driving Together an initiative that uses data to reduce accidents. So great stuff. So let's get into it. Tell us about eDesign Insurance and your vision behind transforming to insurance tech company. Combining the technology, new type of automobile insurance for a digital age. >> Okay. With the pandemic of Covid 19 dissertation is accelerating at rapid pace everywhere. First, insurance were required to define the kind of easy to use, meaningful service they wanted to offer their customers. eDesign in collaboration with Accenture, sought to redefine the company's mission, vision and values by embracing the customer experience in a new way. While a customer's traditional view of automobile insurance is "just in case" Accenture and eDesign form the view that what customers really want is accident prevention. With a redefined objective of co-creating with customers not only peace of mind in the event of an accident, but also a world without accidents. ANDI developed a service that uses cutting edge digital technologies to create a safer and more secure car experience. >> Akiko talk about from insurance perspective and Accenture you know, we know about FinTech, you got InsureTech this is a segment that's growing rapidly, lot of data lot of new capabilities with the cloud. Can you share your thoughts on this new opportunity? >> This is a new innovation for many insurance client especially who owns, the traditional policyholder and the new generations. So they that give the new experience for customers, it makes a big change for the customer experience, and that eDesign is leading this experience in the world I think. >> Awesome. What are the key features of the advanced cloud-based automobile insurance system you guys call ANDI, and how does it work? >> The most advanced full crowd insurance system in the world and it embraces digital convenience to the fullest with a concept of creating safety with data; ANDI enables that initiative Safe Driving Together. It designs new initiative, aims to use available data to reduce the risk and causes of an accident, and to make society as a whole, as a whole safer and more secure. >> Why did you choose Accenture and AWS for this innovation? What unique value do they bring? >> Good question about Accenture. Accenture supported us in a wide range of areas including business, design, and IT. In addition to the industry knowledge embodiment of vision, and definition requirements. The PMO eliminated communication loss between the business and IT sites, and as a result the development was completed in a short period of time. In addition, Accenture studies in cutting edge digital technologies such as AI and data analysis is necessary to become an insured insurance company. And I appreciate Accenture's ability to provide such capabilities as well. >> Akiko talk about the IOT implementation here. A lot of data, a lot of design work. >> Yeah >> Take us through the experience. >> Okay. >> And how does Amazon and Accenture come together. >> ANDI and to support safe driving with eDesign insurance for the compact IOT car sensor with this size to put free charge for all of the policyholders to use a language mobile app. The system captures capture and monitors the drivers driving data, diagnosed and driving mood, and driving behavior which is safe or not and supports safe driving. In the event of the accident the system automatically detect the impact and can summarize the accident situation which is very difficult for the driver to recognize by themselves, and the location, location data. And many others and driver can then report the accident with single tap on their smartphone, very easy. And request assistance or repair shop on the spot. It's very safe and also very smooth for the giving the good experience for customers. >> I know Accenture has great expertise, that's one. But you have been in both involved in this smart market rollout. Can you explain that? The smart market rollout? >> Yeah, it's, it was very interesting that we we had the very smooth importation with eDesign and especially AWS allow us to give the open and crowd system to strong collaboration with many other ecosystem partners and many AI sensors and many IOT sensors opportunity. That gives us a lot of experience and give more opportunity for an eScape company like eDesign sample, so that can be more smooth and open implementation for the future. >> That's great rollout. You know we love this example of AWS Accenture eDesign co-creation. It reminds me of the big super cloud trend where industries can be refactored and and and scaled up. So how was ANDI built and what were the requirements driving the technical solution? >> We, we, we, we brought, we planned the architecture how that works for the future and especially Kuwabarason and the great leadership. He doesn't like something which already in the market and also which can be more fit for the future, the solution which fit for the future and maybe that can allow market customers to have big experience. That's why we, we choose open crowd, new trend, new digital trend and IOT or whatever. That gives our architecture definition, which can, lead by Kuwabarason with AWS with this crowd solution as well as with very packaged basis and also open connection with many other AI in the new technology. So that's why it can be more, this solution going to be grow more in the future and we will have more surprises in the future. Kuwabarason if you have some add add comment please >> Go Ahead. >> (laughing) >> Go ahead. What's your thought? Share? >> Thank, thank you Horason very good comment (laugh). So in collaboration with Accenture, I could develop our team's capability. Because we are working together like one team. That is a key success factor I think. >> Talk about the customer experience, and the results. What feedback have you received from your customers and what does the data say? >> Okay. One interesting feedback we receive is "I was always concerned about my wife's love of driving, but by showing her the ANDI driving score, I was able to point it out to her objectively, which was very helpful." That was a good feedback. In this way there are many positive feedback about the ability of visualize the safety, and danger of ones own driving. When I hear customers say that they can now drive more safely because they can objectively identify their bad driving through ANDI's safe driving program I feel very happy that we created ANDI >> Kiko your thoughts? >> Yeah, it's, it's very obvious that the customers likes how, customers likes the sensor saying how they are driving and they, they they sense my driving behavior is safe they are going to be confident. If not, they going to be very careful in the future that's happening. And maybe that can be aligned with insurance which eDesign is giving is more they feel more confident to drive in in many areas. And also that can give more opportunity that they can have more new type of insurance and new experience with the car. That's, that's kind of the interesting make up of power of the driving including the sensor would be happening. That can be good news for us and we can be more creative to think about new experience for customers. >> Congratulations for receiving the highest IT grand prize from the IT award sponsored by the Japan Institute of Information Technology. What's next for eDesign? Congratulations. What's next? How do you take it further, to change to transform the insurance business? >> Okay. I believe ANDI's strength lies in its data. By sharing data with our customers in a timely manner we contribute to their safe driving. We hope to work with customers to create a safe driving experience that is based on parts and that can be enjoyed like a game. Furthermore, we would like to create a society and community where accidents are less likely to occur. Based on the accumulated data in cooperation with local governments and other organizations. We'd like to contribute to the realization of such a safe and secure society by acquiring and analyzing solid data through ANDI On what kind of accidents occur and under what circumstances. >> Akiko Big awards. What's next? AWS, Accenture, eDesign take us through the vision. >> Yeah, it's, it's, I'm, I'm looking forward to do to do the next things and actually eDesign have not only auto insurance, they cover more home and also many others. So that can be giving the more safer opportunity for customers. They can leave their home very smoothly and even some disaster happening, they can escape very safely. Whatever happening in the family like childcare or maybe even their pet have some challenges we can take care of them and that's kind of many experience which which can align with eDesign's insurance. Most of the things we can give lot of safe and with data and also some IOT things and also insurance that's giving the more opportunity and something can truly resolve the social issue. That can be many opportunities. So that's why we have some plan. But we like to we like to keep a secret for the next future. >> Safe driving together, unlock benefits by gamifying and creating cloud-based advanced data, IOT sensors, encouraging drivers to work together to be safe. This is very, very an important story and thank you so much for sharing. eDesign, thank you for coming on. Congratulations on your awards, and transforming insurance tech. It should be fun. Not a hassle. Thank you for sharing. >> Thank you very much. >> Very much. >> Okay. eDesign co-creating innovation. This is the story of Cloud Next Generation. I'm John Fur the Cube, part of the AWS Reinvent 2022 Cube coverage here with Accenture. Thanks for watching. (calm tech music)

Published Date : Nov 30 2022

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Nick Volpe, Accenture and Kym Gully, Guardian Life | AWS Executive Summit 2021


 

>>And welcome back to the cubes coverage of AWS executive summit at re-invent 2021. I'm John ferry hosts of the cube. This segment is about surviving and thriving and with the digital revolution that's happening, the digital transformation that's turning into and changing businesses. We've got two great guests here with guardian life. Nick Volpi CIO of individual markets at guardian life and Kim golly CTO of life. And is at Accenture essentially, obviously doing a lot of cutting-edge work, guardian changing the game. Nick, thanks for coming on, Kevin. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks John. Good to be here. >>So I wonder before I get into the question, I want to just set the table a little bit. The pandemic has given everyone a mandate, the good projects are exposed. The bad projects are exposed. Everyone can kind of see kind of what's happening because of the pandemic forced everyone to kind of identify what's working. What's not working what the double-down on innovation for customers is a big focus, but now with the pandemic kind of relieving and coming out of it, the world's changed. This is an opportunity for businesses, Nick, this is something that you guys are focused on. Can you take us through what guardian lives doing kind of in this post pandemic changeover as cloud goes next level? >>Yeah. Thanks John. So, you know, the immediate need in the pandemic situation was about the new business capability. So those familiar with insurance traditionally, you know, life insurance, underwriting, disability underwriting is very in-person fluids labs, uh, attending physician statements. And when March of 2020 broke that all came to an abrupt halt, right doctor's office were either closed. Testing centers were either closed or inundated with COVID testing. So we had to come up with some creative ways to digitize our new business, um, adopt the application and adopt our new medical questionnaires and also get creative on some of our underwriting standards that put us at, you know, certain limits and certain levels and how we, when we needed fluids. So we, we, we have pretty quickly, we're agile about decisions there. And we moved from about, uh, you know, 40 to 50% adoption rate of our electronic applications to, you know, north of 98% across the board. >>Um, in addition, we kind of saw some opportunities for products and more capabilities beyond new business. So after we weathered the storm, we started taking a step back. And like you said, look at what we were doing. Like kind of have a start, stop, continue conversation internally to say, you know, this digitation digitization is a new norm. How do we meet it from every angle, not just a new business, right? And that's where we started to look at our policy administration systems, moving more to the cloud and leveraging the cloud to its fullest extent versus just a lift and shift. >>Kim, I want to get your perspective at a century I'm, I've done a lot of interviews with the past, I think 18 months, lots of use cases with a central, almost in every vertical where you guys are almost like the firefighters get called in to like help out cause the cloud actually now isn't an enabler. Um, how do you see the impact of the, of the pandemic around reverbing through? I mean, obviously you guys come to the table, you guys bring in, I mean, what's your perspective on this? >>So, yeah, it's really interesting. I think the most interesting fact >>Is, you know, we talk about Nick raised the, you know, such a strong area in our business of underwriting and how can we expedite that? There's been talking on the table for a number of years. Um, but the industry has been very slow or reluctant to embrace. And the pandemic became a very informed, I became an enforcer in it to be honest. And a lot of the companies were thinking about a prior. Um, but that's, it they'll think about it. I mean, even essentially we, we launched a huge three-year investment to get clients into cloud and digital transformation, but the pandemic just expedited everything. Now the upside is clients that were in a well-advanced stage of planning, uh, that we're easily able to adopt. Uh, but clients that weren't were really left behind. Um, so we became very, very busy just supporting the clients that weren't didn't have as much forethought as the likes of guardian, et cetera. >>Nick, that brings up a good point. I want to get your reaction to see if you agree. I mean, people who didn't put their toe in the cloud, or just jump in the deep end, really got flat-footed when the pandemic hit, because they weren't prepared people who were either ingratiated in with the cloud or how many active projects were even being full deployments in there did well, what's your take on that? >>Yeah, the, the enablement we had and, and the gift we were given by starting our cloud journey, and I want to say 2016, 17 was we really started moving to the cloud. And I think we were the only insurer that moved production load to the cloud at that point. Um, most of insurers were putting their development environments, maybe even their environments, but, you know, guardian had a strategy of getting out of the data center and moving to a much more flexible, scalable environment architecture using the AWS cloud. Um, so we completed our journey into the cloud by 2018, 19, and we were at the point of really capitalizing versus moving. So we were able to move very quickly, very nimbly, uh, when, when the pandemic hit or in any digital situation, we have that, that flexibility and capacity that AWS provides us to really respond to our customers, our customer's needs. So we were one of the more fortunate insurers that were well into our cloud journey and at the point of optimization versus the point of moving. >>So let's talk about the connection with, with the sensors, life insurance and annuity platform also known as a, I think the acronym is, uh, what was that? Why was that relevant? What, what was that all about? >>Yeah. So I'll go first and then Kim, you can jump in and see if you agree with me. Um, so >>It's essentially, >>I suspect you would write John, like I said, our new business focus was the original, like the, the, the, the emergency situation when the pandemic hit. But as we went further into it and realized the mortality and morbidity and the needs and wants of our customers, which is a major focus of guardian, really being, having the client at the center of every conversation we have, we realized that there was a real opportunity for product and his product continues to change. And you had regulations like 7,702 coming out where you had to reprice the entire portfolio to be able to sell it by January 1st, 2022, we realized our current systems are for policy admin. We're not matching our digital capabilities that we had moved to the cloud. So we embarked on a very extensive RFP to Accenture and a few other vendors that would come to the table and work with us. >>And we just really got to a place where combination of our, our desire to be on the cloud, be flexible and be capable for our customers. Married really well with the, the knowledge, the industry knowledge and the capabilities that Accenture brought to the table with the Ayla platform, um, their book of business, their current infrastructure, their configuration versus development, really all aligned with our need for flexible, fast time to market. You know, we're looking to cut development times significantly. We're looking to cut tests in times niggly. And as of right now, it's all proving true between the CA the cloud capability and halo capability. We are reaping the benefits of having this new platform, uh, coming up in live very soon here before. >>Well, I get to, um, a center's perspective. I want to just ask you a quick follow-up on that. Nick, if you don't mind the, you basically talk us through, okay, I can see what's happening here. You get with Accenture take advantage of what they got going on. You get into the cloud, you start getting the efficiencies, get the cultural change. What refactoring has you have you seen? What's your vision? I should say, what's your vision around what's next? Because clearly there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a playbook you get in the cloud replatform, you get the cultural fit, you understand the personnel issues, how to tap the resources. Then you gotta look for innovation where you can start changing. What, how you do things to refactor the business model. >>Yeah. So I think that, you know, specifically to this conversation, that's around the product capability, right? So for all too long, the insurance companies have had three specific sleeves of insurance products. We've had individual life. We have an individual disability and we'd have individual annuities, right? Each of them serving a specific purpose in the customer's lives, what this platform and this cloud platform allows us to do is start to think about, can we create the concept of a single rapper? Can we bring some of these products together? Can we centralize the buying process? And with ALA behind the scenes, you don't have that. You know, I kind of equate it to building a Ferrari and attaching a, uh, a trailer to it, right? And that's what we were doing today. Our digital front ends, our new business capabilities are all being anchored down or slowed down by our traditional mainframe backends by introducing Accenture on the cloud in AWS, we now have our Ferrari fully free to run as fast as it can versus anchoring this massive, you know, trailer to it. Um, so it really was a matter of bringing our product innovation to our digital front end innovation that we've been working on for, you know, two or three years prior. >>I mean, this is the kind of the Amazon way, right? You decouple things, you decompose, you don't want to have a drag. And with containers, we're seeing companies look at existing legacy in a way that's different. Um, can you talk about how you guys look at that Nick and terminally? Because a lot of CEO's are saying, Hey, you know what? I can have the best of both worlds. I don't have to kill the old to bring in the new, but I can certainly modernize everything. What's your reaction to that? >>Yeah. And I think that's, that's our exact, that's our exact path forward, right? We don't, we don't feel like we need to boil the ocean. Right. We're going after the surgically for the things that we think are going to be most impactful to our customers, right? So legacy blocks of business that are sitting out there that are, you know, full, completely closed. They're not our concern. It's really hitching this new ALA capability to the next generation of products. The next generation of customer needs understanding data, data capture is very important. And right. So if you look at the mainframes and what we're living on now, it's all about the owner of the policy. You lose connection with the beneficiary or the insured, what these new platforms allowed us to do is really understand the household around the products that they're buying. Right. I know it sounds simple, but that data architecture, that data infrastructure on these newer platforms and in the cloud, you can turn it faster. >>You have scale to do more analysis, but you're also able to capture in a much cleaner way on the traditional systems. You're talking about what we call intimately the blob on the mainframe that has your name, your first name, your last name, your address, all in one free form field sitting in some database. It's very hard to discern on these new platforms, given our need and our desire to be deeper into the client's lives, understanding their needs, ALA coupled with em, with AWS, with our new business capabilities on the front end really puts together that true customer value chain. That's going to differentiate us. >>Okay. I'm okay. CTO of a live as he calls it, the acronym for the service you have, this is a great example. I hate to use the word on-ramp cause that sounds so old, right? But in a way in vertical markets, you're seeing the power of the cloud because the data and the AI could be freed up and you can take advantage of all the heavy lifting by providing some platform or some support with Amazon, the, your expertise. This is a great use case of that, I think. And I think, you know, this is, I think a future trend where the developments can be faster, that value can be faster and your customers don't have to build all that lower level abstractions. If you will. Can you describe the essential relationship to your customers as you guys? Cause this is a real great use case. >>Yeah, it is. You know, our philosophy is simple. Let's not reinvent the wheel and with cloud and native services as AWS and, uh, provide w we want to focus on the business of what the system needs to do and not all the little side bets, we can get a great service. That's fully managed that has, uh, security patches updates. We want to focus on the real deal. Like Nick wants to focus on the business and not so much what's underneath it. That's my problem. I'm focusing on that. And we will work together, uh, in a nice little gel. You've had the relatively new term, no code, low code. You know, it's strange a modern system, like a lip has been that way for a number of years. Basically it means I don't want to make code changes. I just want to be able to configure it. >>So now more people can have access to make change, and we can even get it to the point where it's the people that are sitting there, dealing with the clients that would be the ultimate, where they can innovate and come up with ideas and try things because we've got it so simple. We're not there yet, but that's the ultimate goal. So alien, the no code, no code has been around for quite some time. And maybe we should take advantage of that, but I think we're missing one thing. So as good as the platform is the cloud moving in calculating native services, using the built-in security that comes with all that, um, and extending the function and then being able to tap into, you know, the InsureTech FinTech internet of things, and quickly adapt. I think the partnership is big. Okay. Uh, it's, it's very strong part of the exercise, so you can have the product, but without the people that work well together, I think it's also a big challenge. >>You know, all programs have their idiosyncrasies and there's a lot of challenges along the way. You know, there's one really small, simple example I can use. Um, I'd say guardian is one of our industries, market leaders, when, and when they approach the security, they really do lead the way out there. They're very strict, very, um, very responsible, which is such a pleasure to say, but at the end of the day, you still need to run a business. So, you know, because we're a partnership because we all have the same challenges we want to get to success. We were able to work together quite quickly. We planned out the right approach that maximize the security, but it also progressed the business. So, and we applied that into the overall program. So I think it is the product. Definitely. I think it is, uh, everything Nick said you actually elaborated on, but I'd like to point out there's a big part of the partnership to make it a success. >>Yeah. Great, great call out there, Nick, let's get your reaction on that because I want to get into the customer side of it. This enablement platform is kind of the new platform has been around for awhile, but the notion of buying tools and having platforms are now interesting because you have to take this kind of low code, no code capability, and you still got to code. I mean, there's some coding going on, but what it means is ease of use composing and being fast, um, platforms are super important. That requires real architecture and partnership. What's your reaction. >>Yeah. So I think, you know, I'll, I'll tie it all together between AWS and ALA, right? And here's the beauty of it. So we have something called launchpad where we're able to quickly stand up in AIDAP instance for development capabilities because of our Amazon relationship. And then to Kim's point, we have been successful 85% or more of all the work we've done with Inala is configuration versus code. And I'd actually I'd venture to say 90%. So that's extremely powerful when you think about the speed to market and our need to be product innovative. Um, so if our developers and even our, our analysts that sit on the business side could come in and quickly stand up a development buyer and start to play with, um, actuarial calculations, new product features and function, and then spin that to a more higher end development environment. You now have the perfect coupling of a new policy administration system that has the flexibility and configuration with a cloud provider like Amazon and AWS that allows us to move quickly with environments. Whereas in days past you'd have to have an architecture team come in and stand up the servers. And, you know, I'm going way back, but like buy the boxes, put the boxes in place and wire them down. This combination available in AWS has really a new capability to guardian that we're really excited about. >>I love that little comparison. Let me just quickly ask you compared to the old way, give us an order of magnitude of pain and timing involved versus what you just described as standing up something very quickly and getting value and having people shift their, their intellectual capital into value activities versus undifferentiated heavy lifting. >>Yes. I'll, I'll give you real dates. Right? So we engage really engaged with Accenture on the ALA program. Right before Thanksgiving of last year, we had our environment stood up and running all of our vitamins dev set UAT up by February, March timeframe on AWS. And we are about to launch our first product configuration into the, of the platform come November. So within a year we've taken arguably decades of product innovation from our mainframes and built it onto the Ayla platform on the Amazon cloud. So I don't know that you can do that in any other type of environment or partnership. >>It's amazing. You know, that's just great example to me, uh, where cloud scale and real refactoring and business agility is kinda plays out. So congratulations. I got to ask you now on the customer side, you mentioned, um, you guys love, uh, providing value to the customers. What is the impact of the customer? Okay, now you're a customer guardian life's customer. What's the impact of them. Can you share how you see that rendering itself in the marketplace? >>Yeah, so, so clearly AWS has rendered tons of value to the customer across the value stream, right? Whether it be our new business capability, our underwriting capability, our ability to process data and use their scale. I mean, it just goes on and on about the AWS, but specifically around ad-lib, um, the new API environment that we have, the connectivity that we can now make with the new backend policy admin systems has really brought us to a new, a new level. Um, whether it be repricing, product innovation, um, responding to claims capabilities, responding to servicing capabilities that the customer may need. You know, we're able to introduce more self-service. So if you think about it from the back end policy admin, going forward to our client portal, we're able to expose more transactions to self-serve. So minimize calls to the call center, minimize frustration of hold times and allow them to come onto the portal and do more and interact more with their policies because we're on this new, more modern cloud environment and a new, more modern policy admin. So we're delivering new capabilities to the customer from beginning to end being on the cloud with, with, >>Okay, final question. What's next for guardian life's journey year with Accenture. What's your plans? What do you want to knock down for the next year? What's what's on your mind? What's next? >>Uh, so that's an easy question. We've had this roadmap plan since we first started talking to Excentra, at least I've had it in my head. Um, we, we want off all of our policy admin systems for new business come end of 2025. So we've got about four policy admin systems maintaining our different lines of business, our individual disability or life insurance, and our newest, um, four systems that are kind of weighing us down a little bit. We have a glide path and a roadmap with Accenture as a partner to get off of all of these, for new business capability, um, by end of 2024. And that's, you know, I'm being gracious to my teams when I say that I'd like to go a little bit sooner, and then we begin to migrate the, the most important blocks of business that caused the most angst and most concerned with the executive leadership team and then, you know, complete the product. >>But along the way, you know, given regulation, given new, uh, customer customer needs, you know, meeting the needs of the customers changing life, we're going to have parallel tracks, right? So I envision we continue to have this flywheel turning of moving, but then we begin another flywheel right next to it that says we're going to innovate now on the new platform as well. So ultimately John, next year, if I could have my entire whole life block, as it stands today on the new admin platform and one or two new product innovations on the platform as well, by the third quarter, fourth quarter of next year, that would be a success. As far as that. >>Awesome. You guys had all planned out. I love, and I have such a passion for how technology powers business. And this is such a great story for next gen kind of where the modernization trend is today and kind of where it's going. It's the Nick. Appreciate it, Kim. Thanks for coming out with a censure Nixon. It's an easy question for you. I have to ask you another one. Um, this is, I got you here. You know, you guys are doing a lot of great work for other CEOs out there that are going through this right now, whether whatever they are on the spectrum missed the cloud way of getting in. Now this notion of refactoring and then replatforming, and then refactoring business is a playbook we're seeing emerge. People can get the benefits of going to the cloud, certainly for efficiency, but now it opens up the aperture for different kinds of business models. With more data access with machine learning. This refactoring seems to be the new hot thing where the best minds are saying, wow, we could do more, even more. What's your vision? How would you share those folks out there, out there, or the CEOs? What should they be thinking? What's their approach? What advice would you give? >>Yeah, so a lot of the mistakes we make as CEOs, we go for the white hot core first, right? We went the other way. We went for the newer digital assets. We went for the stuff that wasn't as concerning to the business should be fall over. Should there be an outage? Should there be anything? Right? So if you avoid the white hot core, improve it with your peripherals, easier moves to the cloud portals, broker, portals, um, beneficiary portals, uh, simple, you know, AIX frames, moving to the cloud and making them cloud native new builds. Right? So we started with all those peripheral pieces of the architecture and we avoided the white hot core because that's where you start to get those very difficult conversations about, I don't know if I'm ready to move. And I don't see the obvious benefit of moving a dividend generating policy admin system to the cloud. Like why, when you prove it in the pudding and you put the other things out there and prove you can be successful the conversation and move your core and your white hot core out to the platform out to leverage the cloud and to leverage new admin platforms, it becomes a much easier conversation because you've kind of cut your teeth on something much less detrimental to the business. Should it be >>What's the other expression, put water through the pipes, get some reps in and get the team ready to bring training, whatever metaphor you. That's what you're essentially saying. There, get, get some, get some, get your sea legs, get, get practice >>Exactly. Then go for the hard stuff, right? >>It's such a valid point. John is, you know, we see a lot of different approaches across a lot of different companies and, and the biggest challenges, the core is the biggest part. And if you start with that, it can be the scariest part. And I've seen companies trip up big time and you know, it becomes such a bubble spend, which really knocks you on for years, lose confidence in your strategy and everything else. And you're only as strong as your weakest link. So whether you do the outside first or the inside first from a weakest link until it's, the journey is complete, you're never going to maximize. So it was a, it was a very, uh, different and new and great approach that they took by doing a learning curve around the easiest stuff. And then, >>Yeah. Well, that's a great point. One quick, quick followup on that is that the talk about the impact of the personnel, Kim and Nick, because you know, there's a morale issue going on too. There's a, there's a, there's a training. I won't say training, but there's not re-skilling, but there's the rigor. If you're refactoring, you are, re-skilling, you're doing new things, the impact on morale and confidence. If you're not, you get the white, you don't wanna be in the white core unconfident. >>Maybe I should get first. Cause it's Nick's stuff. So he probably might want to say a lot, but yeah. Um, what we see with a lot of insurance companies, uh, they grow through acquisition. Okay. They're very large companies grown over time, uh, buying companies with businesses and systems and bringing it in. They usually bring a ten-year staff. So getting the staff to the next generation, uh, those staff is extremely important because they know everything that you've got today, and they're not so, uh, fair with what's coming up in the future. And there is a transition and people shouldn't feel threatened, but there is change and people do need to adopt and evolve and it should be fun and interesting, but it is a challenge at that turnover point on who controlling what, and then you get the concerns and get paranoid. So it is a true HR issue that you need to manage through >>The final word here. Go for it. >>Yeah. John, I'll give you a story that I think will sum the whole thing up about the excitement versus contention. We see here at guardian. I have a 50 year veteran on my legacy platform team and this person is so excited, got themselves certified in Amazon and is now leading the charge to bring our mainframes onto a lip and is one of the most essential. And I've actually had Accenture tell me if I had a person like this on every one of my engagements who is not only knowledgeable of the legacy, but is so excited to move to the new. I don't think I'd have a failed implementation. So that's the kind of guardian, the kind of backing guardians putting behind this, right? We are absolutely focusing on rescaling. We are not going to the market. We're giving everyone the opportunity and we have an amazing take-up rate. And again, like I said, 50 year veteran who probably could have retired 10 years ago is so excited, reeducated themselves, and is now a key part of this implementation, >>Hey, who wouldn't want to drive a Ferrari when you see it come in, right? I mean Barston magnet trailer. Great story, Nick. Thank you for coming on. Great insight, Kim, great stuff for the century as always a great story here, right? At the heart of the real focus where all companies are feeling right now, we're surviving and thriving and coming out of the pandemic with a growth strategy and a business model with powered by technology. So thanks for sharing the story. Appreciate it. Thanks John. Appreciate it. Okay. So cube coverage of 80 of us executive summit at re-invent 2021. I'm John furrier, your host of the cube. Thanks for watching.

Published Date : Nov 9 2021

SUMMARY :

I'm John ferry hosts of the cube. because of the pandemic forced everyone to kind of identify what's working. So those familiar with insurance traditionally, you know, life insurance, underwriting, Like kind of have a start, stop, continue conversation internally to say, you know, this digitation digitization lots of use cases with a central, almost in every vertical where you guys are almost like the firefighters get called in I think the most interesting fact And a lot of the companies were thinking about a prior. I want to get your reaction to see if you agree. but, you know, guardian had a strategy of getting out of the data center and moving to a much more flexible, Um, so And you had regulations like 7,702 coming out where you had to reprice the entire portfolio the knowledge, the industry knowledge and the capabilities that Accenture brought to the table with the I want to just ask you a quick follow-up on that. the scenes, you don't have that. I can have the best of both worlds. So legacy blocks of business that are sitting out there that are, you know, into the client's lives, understanding their needs, ALA coupled with em, with AWS, CTO of a live as he calls it, the acronym for the service you have, this is a great example. Let's not reinvent the wheel and with cloud and native services So now more people can have access to make change, and we can even get it to the point where but at the end of the day, you still need to run a business. but the notion of buying tools and having platforms are now interesting because you So that's extremely powerful when you think about the speed to market Let me just quickly ask you compared to the old way, So I don't know that you can do that in any other type of environment or partnership. I got to ask you now on the customer side, you mentioned, um, you guys love, uh, the new API environment that we have, the connectivity that we can now make with the new backend policy admin systems has What do you want to knock down for the next year? And that's, you know, I'm being gracious to my teams when I say that I'd like to go a little bit sooner, But along the way, you know, given regulation, given new, I have to ask you another one. and you put the other things out there and prove you can be successful the conversation and move your core and your white What's the other expression, put water through the pipes, get some reps in and get the team ready to bring training, Then go for the hard stuff, right? So whether you do the outside first or the inside Kim and Nick, because you know, there's a morale issue going on too. So getting the staff to the next generation, Go for it. is not only knowledgeable of the legacy, but is so excited to move to the So thanks for sharing the story.

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