EastWest Ageas Life Insurance – Insurer Transformation Award 2023

1. Our Transformation Journey:
Where SPEED meets better CX
1 0 . 1 1 . 2 0 2 3
The Digital Insurer Awards
Insurer Transformation 2023

2. Who
• A life insurance joint venture between EastWest Bank, one of the Philippines’ leading universal banks,
and Ageas, a global insurance expert with nearly 200-year global insurance expertise.
• EastWestAgeas (EWA) started with a bancassurance partnership with EastWest Bank
in 2016 and grew to include an agency network in 2022 and a strengthened alternative distribution
channel in 2023.
• In 2022, it has almost 50K individual policyholders and 200K+ group customers
Why
• EWA aims to be one of the top life insurers in the Philippine market and positioning
to grow its customer base to 500K for both individual and group in the next few years.
• A robust distribution force, speed-to-market, and appropriate operational and technology enablers are
imperative to make this happen.
How
• As a lean organization, EWA sees and embraces technology and digital as key success drivers.
• Its growing number of customers seek digital connection with EWA. For EWA to propel this ahead, its
distribution channel must be equipped with digital technologies that enable them to communicate with
clients more effortlessly and quickly.
About Us

3. Customers Frontliners Back office
What Unfavorable customer
experience
• The application procedure can
take up to 90 minutes
• Policy implementation in our
system can take up to 3 days
• Inadequate operational
capability
• Multiple manual interventions
are required
• Difficulties in innovating
• A new product launch can
take up to a year
Why
• Slow customer interactions
• Information inconsistency
across systems
• Ineffective and immutable
business processes
• High-cost IT maintenance,
which takes up a third of
operational expenses
• Hard-coded product
configuration
• High reliance on multiple
vendors
• Difficulties in connecting with
the ecosystem
Pain Points

4. We needed a technical revolution!
We decided to build a future-proof…
Our Approach
…Enterprise …Data architecture …Digital culture
 Easily configure new products or new
processes
 Select the best solution
for each requirement
 Replace any applications,
if needed
 Easily configure, adapt, and automate
our processes
 Leverage the cloud for future growth
 Build excellent customer experience
 Build 360 views using data
from various sources
 Ensure quality and consistency across
systems
 Gain actionable insights
 Democratize data access
 Regain ownership of
our own data
 Reduce our dependencies
on vendors
 Always put users first
 Quickly adapt to changing
environments
 Make smart decisions
by using data

5. Solution 1
One-year transformation
journey completed in
September 2023
From a monolithic
architecture…
…to a composable micro-services
architecture
Customer
portal
Sales portal Staff portal
Bank
app
Digital
ecosystem
Core
insurance
General
ledger
Document
mgt syst.
Lead mgt
system
HR mgt
system
UW engine
Orchestration layer
Business rules, APIs and micro services
100% on cloud, mostly SaaS
AML
tool
We built a future-proof enterprise architecture

6. Solution 2
Core insurance
General ledger
Lead management system
HR management system
AML tool
…
100% of the
applications’
data
is copied to data
lake
Interesting data are
made available and
aggregated
in a data warehouse
Thematic data
marts
are built for
simple access
Users can
visualize
reports and
find insights
on data
Customer
insights
Staff
insights
Sales
insights
Financial
insights
EastWest Ageas Azure Cloud
We built a future-proof data architecture

7. Solution 3
Always put users first
• The experiences of all
stakeholders— customers,
salespeople, and employees—
are at the center of what we
do.
• UX is integrated into all
innovations.
Quickly adapt to changing environments
• Scrum at scale for every new
IT project.
• The program board is managed
as a backlog to immediately
change our priorities when
necessary.
Make smart decisions
by using data
Intelligent dashboards and
reporting to make better
decisions, backed up by
figures and statistics.
We built a future-proof digital culture

8. Milestones
12
Months
end-to-end
25
productsand riders
configured
Core insurance
General ledger
Documents
library
3
majordata migrations
10
nationalities involved
4
key partners to support
3
new websites
built
Implementation speed: All in 1 Year!

9. Customers
Excellent customer experience
Frontliners
Ready to grasp new business
opportunities
Back office
Increased operational excellence
 The insurance application process
now takes only
30 minutes.
 Policy issuing time has been
reduced from three to one day.
 UX/UI has been modernized.
 Real-time data
 Digital tools for faster onboarding
new customers
 Faster and efficient customer
service
 Customers can get real-time
information.
 Faster go-to-market for new
products (from 4 months
to 2 months)
 Product duplication in
less than a month
 Core system’s cost reduced
by 65%
 Automated processes:
70% of new business
Benefits

10. Benefits
Technical benefits from the new
setting
Reduced vendor
dependencies
Improved development
capabilities
Technology
 Each vendor has a limited footprint
 Applications are decoupled for easy
removal
 Our systems back up all data daily
 We have mastered most of the
technologies
 Because of the flexible micro-
services model, new functions can
be quickly integrated with back and
front ends.
 Readiness to scale up or down our
in-house development capabilities
to meet business needs
 Mastering DevOps procedures for
rapid deployment
 One technology stack for all front-
ends
 Complete cloud infrastructure
 Integrated data architecture

11. Quick Wins to Medium-term
Increased profitability: Our go-to-market strategy allows us
to reach clients faster, giving us a competitive advantage,
and faster customer delivery of a new product or service.
Cost-effective processes: With the cost of the core system reduced by
reduced by 65%, introducing new products and services becomes less
expensive.
Benefits

12. Sept. 16-17, 2023: EWA successfully migrated its entire
portfolio