Suncorp sets technology focus for the next three years

Suncorp has put continued platform modernisation and “AI-enabled operational transformation” as its key technology deliverables over the next three years.

The role of technology at the now pure-play general insurance group received top billing at its FY24 annual results briefing. [pdf]

It has recently sold its banking operations to ANZ.

“The completion of the bank’s sale brings to an end a program of portfolio simplification,” Suncorp CEO Steve Johnston said. 

“Suncorp has emerged as a far simpler, easier to understand pure-play trans-Tasman general insurance company.”

Johnston, however, sought to highlight an expansive program of technology work that both enabled Suncorp to split its banking and insurance operations and to simplify.

“What’s less well understood is the program of platform modernisation that we had been executing alongside the sale of the bank,” he said.

“Our FY20-23 strategy prioritised the modernisation of our data, pricing, and digital assets. 

“Over the past three years, we have migrated all of our data to the cloud, we’ve separated bank and insurance data, and we’ve transitioned to contemporary customer platforms. 

“We have modern pricing infrastructure via Earnix, we’ve established commercial broker connectivity via ISME, and we’re well advanced in upgrading all our internal IT and telephony infrastructure.”

During the same period, considerable effort was expended on “digitisation and best-in-class claims” in the pursuit of “operational transformation”.

Suncorp now moves into a fresh three-year strategy, where platform modernisation continues, while operational transformation activity becomes more AI-focused.

Policy administration modernisation

On the modernisation front, Suncorp’s policy administration system or PAS represents the next major piece of work.

“Having built the foundations in data and pricing, we now move to the multi-year program to replace our policy administration system or our PAS,” Johnston said.

“Put simply, a modern insurance company would not survive on technology that was built before 80 percent of the people that work on it were born. 

“While there is a big technology component to a PAS replacement, think of it more as a root-and-branch rewiring of a general insurance business - reducing complexity, improving speed to market, enabling innovation and importantly allowing us to develop better customer propositions. 

“We’re already underway in AA Insurance in New Zealand before we move back to AAMI in Australia and progressively through the remaining portfolios. 

“This, and the ultimate reconfiguration of claims to the cloud, will create a true digital insurer.”

For operational transformation, Johnston suggested there is still some residual work around digitisation and claims processing; however, AI adoption was a major talking point and future direction.

Getting ambitious with AI

“Our attention will now turn to the deployment of new generation AI capabilities,” Johnston said.

“Without any prompting our team have already developed 100-plus use cases, the most effective of which we have prioritised for funding in FY25. 

“We see GI [General Insurance] as a leading candidate for reaping the benefits of AI. However, we favour a measured deployment, recognising the pace of change will inevitably throw up a number of questions and concerns that will need to be worked through.”

Suncorp’s group executive of technology and operations Adam Bennett said in a statement that AI is already in use across pricing, claims, risk modelling, customer service and automation domains.

The new three-year plan seeks to build on that momentum, while also introducing more specific generative AI use cases. 

It’s been exploring options in the generative AI space for at least a year.

“GenAI models are already mature enough to enable large organisations like Suncorp to reshape our value chain –in the future this could include everything from product innovation and recommendations for customers, underwriting, insurance claims assessment, validation and fraud detection,” Bennett said.

“Our focus in the next year is lower risk use cases with GenAI enabling greater insights, productivity and support for our people.”

Bennett pointed to the existence of an “ambitious pipeline of more than 20 [GenAI] use cases set to be progressively rolled out in the next year.”

These include a single view of an active claim that “recommend[s] next best actions” and saves employees from having to use multiple systems; and a tool for frontline customer service that is used to find answers to customers’ questions.

The past three years

Bennett also provided additional context around technology activities from the last three-year plan that are either completed or that are near-complete.

Suncorp has migrated 90 percent of its technology workloads out of data centres and into public cloud, meeting a key goal it outlined to iTnews back in 2022.

It also “completed a five-year journey to migrate its legacy data warehouse platforms into a cohesive, cloud-based platform, where it is transformed into usable data, supporting both new-generation AI use cases and actionable insights”.

In addition, “an enterprise-wide end user technology transformation with the decommissioning of on-premises hosted virtual desktops and transition to a next-generation laptop solution with cloud presented business applications, supported by improved cyber security capabilities” was also completed.

The group has deployed a large fleet of Microsoft Surface devices.