Title

AWS re:Invent 2023 - Catalyzing success: Max Life’s digital insurance revolution with PwC (AIM249)

Summary

• Max Life Insurance, a joint venture between Max Financial Services and Axis Bank in India, has undergone a significant digital transformation.
• The company has 4.2 million customers, 5 million active policies, $130 billion of sum assured, and $16 billion of assets under management.
• Max Life has a strong market presence with 398 branches, 22,000 employees, and 80,000 agent advisors.
• The company boasts a solvency ratio of 1.27 and has been number one in claim paid percentage for four consecutive years.
• Despite socio-economic challenges, including COVID-19, Max Life reported a 15-year CAGR growth over the past five years.
• PwC partnered with Max Life for cloud transformation, including workload migration, application modernization, data estate modernization, and API modernization.
• Max Life's strategy focused on nine pillars, including e-commerce business growth, onboarding and issuance, digital sales, customer servicing, and enterprise systems.
• The company has moved to a cloud-native solution for onboarding, refactored front-end assets, and re-hosted its core policy admin system on the cloud, becoming the first in India and second in the world to do so.
• Max Life has also established a data-driven enterprise with a data lake architecture and AI/ML models for risk assessment and customer engagement.
• The digital first culture was emphasized, including attracting new talent, upskilling existing resources, and establishing processes like DevSecOps.
• The cloud transformation journey is ongoing, with 70% of workloads currently on the cloud and an expected 85-90% in the next two quarters.
• Key takeaways for fellow CXOs include maintaining management support, not treating data as an afterthought, focusing on FinOps and security, and setting realistic expectations for legacy system migration.

Insights

• Max Life's digital transformation showcases the importance of aligning technology initiatives with business objectives to drive growth and efficiency.
• The company's success in e-commerce and customer servicing indicates a strong focus on customer experience and digital engagement.
• Moving core systems to the cloud is a significant milestone, demonstrating the scalability and flexibility benefits of cloud infrastructure.
• The emphasis on data-driven decision-making and AI/ML models highlights the value of leveraging data analytics for risk management and personalized customer interactions.
• The digital first culture and talent strategy suggest that human capital and organizational culture are critical components of a successful digital transformation.
• The insights shared by Max Life's CXO on the cloud journey provide valuable lessons for other organizations embarking on similar transformations, particularly the importance of executive buy-in, data strategy, cost management, security, and managing expectations around legacy system migrations.