- Hello, and welcome to Community Chats.
I'm Aley Hammer.
And today we're joined with Neil Maclure
the head of cloud and technology services over at CoverMore.
Neil, welcome to the show.
CoverMore is a global brand with multiple subsidiaries
but for those who might not know,
can you start by telling our audience
a little bit about CoverMore?
- Thank you so much, Aley,
and it's a pleasure to be talking to you today.
It's wonderful to be in the offices of AWS as well.
To your earlier question,
CoverMore of those that are not aware is a global brand.
So we're a global insurance company.
We started up in Sydney now about 36 years ago in 1986.
And through these last 36 years
we've grown to be a global brand.
We specialize predominantly in travel insurance
but we also have medical assistance
and employee assistance as well.
For those again, that don't know, we fit into a much broader
and much larger our mothership
as I like to call it is the Zurich business
which I'm sure our audience know well and truly about.
- Thank you so much, Neil.
And CoverMore has recently gone through
a very successful migration in APAC.
So why did you choose the cloud
and specifically why did you choose AWS?
- Oh, that's a two part question.
If you don't mind Aley, I'll try and break it up
and see if I can do justice to that question.
So the first part is why cloud?
This was actually top of mind.
We did have a compelling event in the business.
And when I meant a compelling event, what that was is,
we all of a sudden were faced with a data center exit.
So we had to get out of our data centers within six months,
we were given a six month notice period
and we had to get out of it.
So that compelling event, we looked at where we were
and we looked at
how we can actually strategically go forward.
There was absolutely no point in moving
from tin to tin as I like to call it,
from a pizza box set up to another pizza box set up,
it just didn't make sense.
So when we first were faced with this compelling event
I sat down with our ELT and I positioned
that either ways we wanted to get to the cloud
but the compelling event accelerated that.
So number one was a compelling event
which is the data sets exit.
The other aspect was flexibility and scalability.
CoverMore as a group is growing exponentially,
especially now that we are out of the pandemic.
What we are seeing in the marketplaces,
we are exponentially...
The interest from our customer base
is exponentially growing.
And we always knew that operating out of,
if you like our data centers was the limitation.
It presented scalability issues.
It presented flexibility issues
in how we actually service our customers, et cetera.
So the second one was flexibility and scalability
but then we also knew that moving to the cloud
would significantly enhance our BCP,
our business continuous planning
and our disaster recovery process.
Straight away from moving from data centers
and into the cloud that gave us that capability
which we never had before.
And that was an area from an audit perspective.
We were constantly having to double down and triple down
and a lot of effort was going into that area.
So moving to the cloud there again
it was a no brainer.
Data, the other aspect was data,
enabling an effective data strategy.
Again, having all of our workloads, et cetera,
sitting in on-prem, it kind of locks you in many ways
from a data and a data execution perspective.
By unlocking it and by moving to the cloud,
that automatically starts to unlock
what we could do with our data,
how we could actually get data
to present new customers to us.
So we are right now, right in the middle
of trying to work out
how we can leverage that data strategy.
And we wouldn't be here without the enabling of the cloud
or the enabler being the cloud.
And lastly, but most importantly
we are growing rapidly within various regions of the globe.
And as part of that, one of our pain points
or one of the points
that we are trying to very quickly get better at
is our target operating model.
Now moving into one central platform globally
in various different geographies makes that possible.
So for all these five, six different data points
it just was absolutely obvious
as to why we should be moving to the cloud.
And to your part two of your question, Aley
which I'm very passionate about in the background as well,
is why AWS?
For us AWS
was the most fit for purpose hyperscaler in market.
AWS simply, the team at AWS, it was the people at AWS,
it's the products, it's the services,
it's the customer obsession that you bring to the table.
But all of that was the soft aspects.
The real aspects for us is security wise.
AWS absolutely stood out and it was a no brainer.
If we wanted to secure our workload,
secure our platforms, et cetera,
with AWS is enhanced security
and virtual organization, et cetera.
It was a no brainer.
So security, scalability, backups, flexibility
and more importantly, AWS, you just get us,
as a business you understand who we are,
you understand the levers that we have within the business.
And you actually understood
that we were going through a pandemic,
in a pandemic situation
a travel insurance brand takes the biggest hit.
And you were right beside us.
When we set up our operations in EMIR,
you stood right beside us.
And we asked you to pivot and scale
and deliver within months.
You absolutely delivered on that.
So when it came to move,
when it came to addressing our APAC issues,
it was no brainer.
AWS was the obvious choice.
- Wow, Neil, what a testimonial.
I mean, I always ask that question
to every single customer I interview
but that is definitely
one of the best responses I've ever heard.
Thank you so much.
That's so great to hear that.
And we feel the exact same way about you guys at CoverMore.
So thank you so much for that.
Neil, I know when you move to the cloud
there are often challenges.
Of course, when you're transitioning to AWS,
there are big icebergs that get in the way.
So how did you overcome them?
And also, were there any parts of the business
that were quite reluctant to move to AWS?
I know you had that six month kind of time limit.
So for you guys, it might have been a little bit easier
to persuade the leadership team
but I did wanna know was anyone reluctant
and also what were some of those big challenges
that you did overcome?
- Again, Aley, I'll try and do just to your question.
That's actually a very pertinent
and a very top of mind question
for a lot of transformations that happen.
So why do we firstly,
I find when you're looking at a transformation program,
the bigger the obstacles or the larger the challenges
I find that makes the transformation to any customer,
all the more meaningful
and tackling those big boulders upfront
and addressing them and unpacking them
with the various blended teams and our partners
right beside us, it just makes it even more satisfying.
When you're sitting in front of your ELT,
you're sitting in front of your board
and basically saying, this is where we were last year.
And look what we've done with our partners this year,
that makes a transformation all the most satisfying.
And then again, it comes down to that customer obsession,
basically enabling that journey.
But to answer your question a lot more directly, Aley,
I think that the biggest challenge
in a transformation program or cloud migration program
is that education piece.
It's that basically making sure that your ELT,
right from your ELT, right down through
to your the other various teams, the developer teams,
et cetera, they're all on the same page.
And they understand the vision,
they understand what's at stake
and they understand when we get to that end state
what it unlocks, the various opportunities that it unlocks,
not just for our internal people, but for our customers.
That is the exciting part
and also the biggest challenge as well, is making sure
that the various teams come together
and are all on the same page
and understand the challenge and value.
- Some great advice.
So, Neil, thank you so much.
I mean, you've successfully migrated to the cloud already.
So what is next for CoverMore
in terms of modernization or product innovation?
Can you give us some insight into that?
- Aley that's again, a lovely question.
And if you don't mind, I feel like like a teenager
who has the keys to a Ferrari sitting in the garage
and our ELT also feel the same way I should say.
We've just moved into a brand new platform
and we've got this brand new platform
and we're starting to work out, okay,
where do we go from here?
And top mind for us is there's four pillars that...
or four key areas we'd like to start exploring is,
one is our data strategy,
and what does it actually mean to redefine our data strategy
to figure out what a modern data architecture
looks like on AWS?
That's the first thing.
We just need to work out, okay, you've got this dash,
what does that dashboard do?
And how do we leverage it to?
- That's the question, right?
A million dollar question, you have the data,
what do you do with it?
- What do we do with it?
And how can we get the data to give us a view
of our customers that we've never been able to see before?
And what does a modern data architecture
for the enterprise looks like?
All this is very exciting for us.
So that's the first piece.
The second piece is all of a sudden being on a platform
now gives us the ability to modernize our core platforms.
As you know, the insurance tech stack
is a very unique type of stack and it requires a lot of TLC.
So again, now that we are basically on AWS,
what does that mean?
Can we move to an RTS state?
What is the elastic containerizations
or container services actually do for us?
That again, top of mind, very exciting.
The teams that basically work with these
on a day to day basis are static about it.
It's like new toys.
Optimization and education,
given this is a consumption driven model,
what's top of mind for a lot of us is
we need to start educating the business on
this being a consumption driven model
the behaviors that come with it,
or the behaviors that basically we need to leverage
to make this work for us.
We need to vigorously execute and drive optimization,
visibility through the businesses.
One of the end states that we have in mind
that we'd like to execute.
And again, we are a bit far...
We had a couple months
is to be able to give the business units those levers,
to see exactly, what consumption actually means.
And so for them to be able to know exactly,
today we are dropping a product
and tomorrow our cost base is going to grow by X percentage.
That's a very powerful lever.
And that's something that us being able
to provide the business that is an even more powerful lever.
It all of a sudden starts to unlock our visibility,
transparency and it starts to give you
that view on exactly how effective a product can be
in the marketplace, I suppose, that's that point of it.
And the last point, I suppose, at least innovation.
Now that we are on a performing and a scalable platform
a key ask from the business is to clearly articulate
how does that play now into our appetite to innovate?
What does that mean for product innovation.
Now that we've got the tools to be able to innovate,
what does that actually mean?
How can we leverage that
to drive innovation through the business?
So these are some things that are top of mind.
And if you find your way into CoverMore one day,
and you sort of eavesdrop on our conversation,
you'll find that these are some of the things
that we're talking about.
And this is from a place of excitement.
So that's where we are.
I hope I've answered your question, Aley.
- Absolutely.
I mean, you make tech very exciting.
We love partnering with you, Neil.
Thank you so much for coming on the show
and sharing the cloud journey.
And as I mentioned, you're so infectious,
your love for technology
and as you say, it's like the keys to the Ferrari.
So we're so glad that you enjoy the tech sack
as much as we do.
And we've just love partnering with you.
So thank you so much, Neil.
If anyone has any questions about CoverMore
or any of the tech that they're using,
please pop them in the comment section below,
and we'll get back to you.
Thanks so much, Neil.
- Thank you Aley, much appreciate it.
Thank you for your time.