Europa Ubezpieczenia and its innovative cloud data platform
Deployment date: 2023
Sector: insurance
Google Cloud
The launch of a new sales brand, called HDI Embedded, has become the impetus for Europa Ubezpieczenia to make changes in the area of data analytics, make the information architecture more consistent, and steer the organization’s growth towards data-driven business. The close collaboration between the client’s team and OChK resulted in the development of an automated data platform in the Google Cloud based on innovative lakehouse architecture. By changing its approach to working with data, Europa Ubezpieczenia can effectively use it in business processes and report consistently to operating units, analysts, and management. They can also efficiently perform the necessary integrations and boost the use of cloud computing.
About Europa Ubezpieczenia
Europa Ubezpieczenia is one of the leading insurance companies in Poland. It cooperates with financial institutions, including banks (bancassurance), as well as partners from other industries (including tourism, trade, and telecommunications), developing so-called affinity products. The company has been operating in the Polish market for nearly 30 years, and its products and services ensure protection for millions of people.
Challenges
Launch of a new business model for selling insurance products. Europa Ubezpieczenia was intent on building a scalable solution in data analytics. The leading motif and the basis of the initiative was the launch of a new sales brand, called HDI Embedded, under which the company offers insurance linked to the main product or service being purchased.
Unification of the organization’s IT architecture. It was crucial for Europa Ubezpieczenia to build an integrated and consistent data source for data analytics processes (i.e., Machine Learning and Business Intelligence), and to ensure a secure, regulatory-compliant architecture that would guarantee cost efficiency and adequate scalability. Both factors would enable harmonious business growth in the years to come.
Building a data-driven organization. The company wants to invest in developing its competencies in data analytics, to consciously and effectively monetize data in business processes, and to improve the customer experience.
Solution and implementation
Following joint consultations and analyses, the teams of Europa Ubezpieczenia and OChK decided to build an automated data platform in the Google Cloud using modern lakehouse architecture. Project implementation included:
1. Configuring an enterprise-class landing zone and formal-legal assistance – this stage involved building a secure foundation on the Google Cloud Platform and covered issues such as organizational policies, billing, logging, monitoring, management of infrastructure elements in Terraform and CI/CD pipelines, hybrid-connectivity to the TUE data center, advanced security mechanisms, as well as encryption of resources and services with KMS keys.
The decision to choose OChK as a process partner was dictated, among other things, by the company’s competencies in the field of cloud security and compliance. As an entity supervised by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (PFSA), Europa Ubezpieczenia, is subject to the requirements of the Cloud Communication. Building an environment that meets all the necessary requirements was one of the core objectives of the project. In order to enable the deployment of the entire solution, it was also necessary to prepare formal documents to the PFSA, which was also supported by the OChK team.
2. PoC and onboarding – OChK experts introduced the Europa Ubezpieczenia team to Google Cloud tools and services in the area of business analytics, and then they both developed a testing and learning environment, trained an actuarial model, and built an actual claims report in PowerBI.
3. Building a data platform and integrating data from two sources – ongoing access to up-to-date information in real time (including sales volumes from partners and management reports) required the teams to configure fully operational environments incorporating data from two sources at the same time (the sales app in Google Cloud and the on-premise warehouse).
4. Developing reports for four categories of business recipients – based on the foundation of the new information architecture, the project team ensured the delivery of value to business users and initiated the transformation towards a data-driven organization by delivering initial reports.
Experts from both companies formed a single project team that, from the very beginning, worked together to develop concepts and make decisions, prioritizing business value. The efficiency of communications and smooth operation is also evidenced by the speed of the project implementation – all the said stages were completed within 17 months.
Technologies used
Terraform / Terragrunt
Gitlab
BigQuery & BigLake Connection
Cloud Composer
Dataflow
Cloud SQL
PubSub
Cloud Storage
Dataplex
Results
The change in approach to working with data enables Europa Ubezpieczenia to use it effectively in the company’s business processes, and build a leading position in technology and innovation in the insurance sector.
Thanks to the standardization and automation of processes, Europa Ubezpieczenia was able to quickly implement the necessary changes at a very early stage of the process, and will more efficiently implement further integrations already planned for the future.
Monitoring data platform costs and implementing best FinOps practices from day one allowed Europa Ubezpieczenia to gain full control over its expenses, optimize them, and make informed decisions to increase the efficiency of the used cloud resources.
Thanks to better accessibility to data and data processing, the waiting time for analysis results has been significantly reduced.
As part of our transformation, we wanted to change the philosophy of thinking about data so that it was not just used to generate reports. We wanted to broaden the use of data across the organization and provide friendly, intuitive, cloud-based tools that allow our employees, also those who are less tech-savvy, to draw valuable conclusions quickly and easily. Data in insurance today brings real value - to the insurer, to partners, to the regulator and to the customers themselves, making it possible to reduce the so-called insurance gap, which is still huge in Poland. The OChK team played a key role in achieving this goal. Their knowledge and professionalism enabled a very fast and seamless implementation of a modern data platform, providing not only technological expertise during the project, but also valuable strategic guidance in the area of data management.
Grzegorz Pawlicki
Board Member and Chief Information Officer at Europa Ubezpieczenia companies
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