FWD Group, a multinational insurance company based in Hong Kong, has announced a five-year technology services agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as part of its ongoing cloud-first strategy.
Under this extended collaboration, AWS will continue to host FWD’s core business applications, including finance and customer interfaces.
This partnership aims to enhance FWD’s agility, scalability, and resilience as the company transitions away from operating its onsite data centers.
Cloud technology has significantly benefited FWD’s software development and deployment, speeding up time-to-market and improving customer experiences.
By the end of 2023, FWD had migrated 97% of its applications to the cloud, a major increase from 27% at the end of 2020, with 93% of outdated applications decommissioned.
Notable projects with AWS include Omne by FWD, a digital self-service and claims process platform, and a centralised cloud-based finance hub for collecting, validating, and processing financial, investment, and actuarial data.
Between 2021 and 2023, FWD also saw substantial growth in cloud certifications, training over 600 employees through AWS Skills Guild.
FWD’s digital cloud platform integrates analytics, database management, and AI, enhancing development efficiency and security.
This cloud-first approach supports FWD’s generative AI deployment, which aims to improve customer experience and operations across various functions.
Since starting its AI journey in 2019, FWD now employs nearly 200 AI models with over 600 use cases.
Sandeep Pandey, Group Chief Technology & Operations Officer of FWD Group, said,
“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.”
Francessca Vasquez, Vice President of Professional Services and Generative Artificial Intelligence Innovation Center, AWS, 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.”
Featured image: (Left: Francessca Vasquez, Vice President of Professional Services and Generative Artificial Intelligence Innovation Center, AWS; right: Sandeep Pandey, Group Chief Technology & Operations Officer of FWD Group)
