Insurance processes are fragmented and manual in nature. For the next generation of digitally savvy consumers, New York Life Labs uses modern technology and analytics to engage with and provide best-in-class customer service. This session will discuss how New York Life Labs is mobilizing key insurance technology components including customer service, underwriting, policy administration, and claims processing. This session will focus on how New York Life Labs is taking a mobile-first approach in redesigning claims processing with responsive design, automated workflows, and AWS mobile services. Some of the services discussed will be Amazon Cognito, Amazon SNS, AWS Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon SWF, and how they all come together.

1. © 2016, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Ilya Epshteyn, AWS
Rohit Katti, NY Life Labs
Sudeep Kulkarni, NY Life Labs
November 30, 2016
MBL402
Re-imagining Insurance Processes with AWS
Mobile Services
How New York Life Labs is re-imagining insurance
processes through disruptive innovation in the cloud

2. What to Expect from the Session
 AWS Mobile Services Recap
 New York Life Labs Use Case
 Business Problem Overview
 Solution Overview
 Deep Dive

3. Mobile dev perspective
Platforms
 Android, iOS, etc.
Languages
 Java, Swift, Java Script, HTML5, C#,
Objective-C, Ruby, CSS
Frameworks
 Cordova/PhoneGap
 Ionic, Kendo
 React Native
 and more…
Development environments
 Native apps, Mobile web, Hybrid app
Customer perspective
Secure, fast, responsive,
intuitive, personalized
user experience
Business perspective
Audience, engagement

4. Native app or and mobile web
Despite apps dominance in usage time, mobile web is responsible for big audiences on
mobile. Mobile web audiences are almost 3x the size and growing 2x as fast as app
audiences (Source: comScore The 2016 U.S. Mobile App Report)

5. Areas that will make your app a success
 Make it easy to find
 Provide immediate and clear value
 Simplify the user interface
 Personalize experience with user insights
 Deliver contextual information
 Make it fun

6. Areas that customers spend the most time on
Identity Management
Auth
Device Synchronization
Asynchronous Communication
Engagement Analytics
User Behavior
User Retention
Push Notifications
File and Media Storage
Database access
And More….

7. Get started faster AWS Mobile SDKs
• Android, iOS, Unity, and JavaScript
• React Native Developer Preview – NEW!
• Cross-service authentication mechanism
• Optimized for mobile OS
• Handle intermittent network connections
• Reduced memory footprint, battery impact
iOS Android Fire OS Unity
Xamarin React Native
(Developer Preview)
Java Script

8. Amazon Cognito
Authenticate & sync
Amazon Mobile
Analytics
Analyze user behavior
AWS Lambda
Run business logic
Amazon S3
Amazon DynamoDB
Store content
Store data
Amazon SNS mobile
push notifications
Send push notifications
Complete set of mobile services
Mobile SDK
Amazon API Gateway

9. About New York Life Labs
 New York Life Labs is a subsidiary of New York Life Ventures, the corporate
venture arm of New York Life Insurance Co.
 Thinkers, engineers, and actuarial scientists
 Experimenting with Chatbots, AI, and Blockchain
 Connect, collaborate, and create next generation insurance products and
services

10. Insurance processes are broken
 Analysts have to jump through a large number of systems to process a
single claim
 Fragmented systems
 Data interoperability
 Manual work involving claim setup, review, and payout
 It takes significant time to collect required information to process a claim
for a vanilla term life policy

11. Solution approach and goals
 Disruptive innovation – build a new system from the ground up
 Complete freedom – unfettered by constraints of existing systems
 Mobile-first – utilizing the best of latest technologies and tools
 Cloud native – secure, easy to scale, easy to deploy, easy to use
 Focus on key value of the app – leverage as many AWS services as possible

12. Design goals
 Responsive, mobile-first design:
 Website “responds” to its environment
 Seamless transition between devices
 Screen-size agnostic
 Material design:
 Delightful visuals, playful animations
 Bright, bold colors
 Uniform experience across all devices

15. Redesign of claims processing grounds up
1. Beneficiary submits the claim online
2. Claim is saved and policy information is retrieved
3. Workflow process triggered
4. Automated claim processing workflow initiated
5. Notifications of status updates sent to beneficiaries
1
2
3
4 5

16. Application architecture
Availability Zone 1
Node.js backend
Availability Zone 2
Node.js backend
Frontend
Amazon
DynamoDB
Amazon
Cognito
AWS Lambda
Amazon
SWF
Amazon
SNS

17. Authentication and authorization with Amazon
Cognito
 Why did we use Amazon Cognito?
 Securely access AWS services and resources used by our application
 Support for authenticated and unauthenticated identities
 Allows more than one user to have the same kind of access to services
and resources defined in the pool’s policy
 Security requirement for token validation
 Authorize API routes
 Need a way to validate tokens
 Leveraged custom authorizer blueprints for API Gateway

18. Custom authorizer blueprint
Internet
Mobile
Endpoints on
AWS Elastic
Beanstalk
401
Custom authorizer
Amazon
DynamoDB
AWS Lambda

19. Custom authorizer sample code

20. Amazon Cognito user pools
 Why did we select Amazon Cognito user pools?
 Scalable, fully-managed user directory
 Provides enhanced security; gives granular control over sign-up and
sign-in process
 As a startup, rapid ramp-up time facilitated by user pools was a
critical factor
 Worked closely with the AWS product team as early beta users

21. Amazon Cognito user pools custom fields
 Custom registration fields
 Mandatory while signing up
 Used for RBAC; distinguish among different
types of user in the application layer
 Defines the operations the user can perform
and objects in the UI
 Easy to implement
 Considering the use of lifecycle triggers
with Lambda in the future

22. Amazon Cognito user pools custom fields

23. Company
Notified
• Notification received via phone, or through an agent
• The Individual is flagged as deceased in the system
Claim
creation
• New claim is set up
• Workflow process is initiated
Assignment
• Claims are assigned
Review
• Analyst verifies the information received; gathers more info if necessary
• Handles special cases
Payout
• Initiated for each verified beneficiary
• Manager approval could be needed
• Make payment
Claims processing workflow

24. Automated workflow with Amazon SWF

25. Event processing with AWS Lambda
 DynamoDB Stream invokes Lambda, which calls SWF
 Lambda also used as activity workers invoked from SWF
Amazon
DynamoDB
Assign Claim
and trigger workflow
SWF
User files
a claim
DynamoDB
stream
Start the claim
workflow
Trigger additional
business logic

26. Mobile notifications with Amazon SNS
 Why SNS?
 Scalable, simple, and
secure
 Easy to set up, simple,
and cost-effective
 Key considerations
 Security and reliability
 Integration with other
AWS services

27. Mobile notifications with Amazon SNS

28. New York Life Labs and you
 New York Life Labs is the hub for engaged stakeholders
focused on next-gen insurance technologies and products
 We’re both a startup and a Fortune 100 company
 Help shape the future of insurance by joining our team
 Email me at: Rohit_Katti@nylim.com

29. Thank you!

30. Remember to complete
your evaluations!

31. Related Sessions
MBL305 - Developing Mobile Apps and Serverless
Microservices for Enterprises using AWS
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with Serverless and AWS Mobile Services