FWD Group Holdings Limited (FWD Group or FWD), a pan-Asian life insurance business, has signed a five-year technology services agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to advance its cloud-first strategy in Asia. This partnership involves AWS hosting FWD’s critical business applications, including finance, customer interfaces, and insurance agent platforms. The collaboration aims to enhance FWD's agility, scalability, and resilience as it transitions away from onsite data centers. Sandeep Pandey, FWD Group's Group Chief Technology and Operations Officer, emphasized the strategic importance of cloud computing for the company.
“At FWD, cloud computing is a holistic business strategy, not just a priority for the technology function. This digital-first mindset has delivered operational infrastructure and capabilities that are not only secure and cloud-based but also fully integrated across business functions and with valued partners like AWS. With these foundations in place, we can now further scale our generative artificial intelligence (AI) deployment in an efficient, effective, and responsible way, in line with our vision of changing the way people feel about insurance”, he said.
FWD has dramatically increased its cloud adoption, moving 97% of its applications to the cloud by the end of 2023, up from 27% at the end of 2020. Additionally, 93% of the applications slated for decommissioning have been retired. Francessca Vasquez, Vice President of Professional Services and Generative Artificial Intelligence Innovation Centre at AWS discussed AWS's long-term commitment to supporting the financial and insurance sectors.
“AWS has been supporting companies in the financial and insurance industry around the world to better serve their customers with its cloud and AI technologies for more than a decade,” she said. “FWD Group’s ambition of harnessing the power of cloud and generative AI demonstrates their commitment to digital transformation and customer-centricity. We are excited to continue supporting FWD Group with AWS’s proven reliability and capabilities, helping them accelerate innovation, save cost, drive efficiency, and expand their business”.
The collaboration with AWS has enabled FWD to launch several initiatives, including 'Omne by FWD', a digital self-service and claims platform that has received positive customer feedback since its 2022 debut. AWS also helped FWD develop a cloud-based central finance hub for managing financial, investment, and actuarial data. Between 2021 and 2023, FWD saw a substantial increase in cloud-related certifications, including those from the AWS Skills Guild program, which trained over 600 FWD employees and contractors.
FWD’s digital cloud platform incorporates analytics, database management, and AI to boost development efficiency and security. This platform underpins the company’s generative AI initiatives, which focus on enhancing customer experience and operational efficiency in areas such as acquisition, marketing, channel and agent performance, underwriting, claims, and customer service. Since initiating its AI efforts in 2019, FWD has deployed nearly 200 AI models and over 600 use cases across its operations.