Exclusive: Allianz Australia embraces AI, aligning to regulatory standards

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the insurance sector. But for Allianz Technology Australia, the journey has been less about speed and more about balancing regulatory demands and ethical considerations. 

At Cloudera's flagship event, EVOLVE25 in Singapore, Vinod Sukumaran, Head of Business Intelligence and Data Technology at Allianz Technology, Australia, said the industry was still cautious in its approach. "When you're talking about AI agents, people are still adapting, especially in the finance industry in Australia," he said. "You have to go through all kinds of regulatory aspects." 

Allianz has now enabled a scalable data analytics platform – crucial for an insurer to simplify the business processes and actively work with customers to manage risks and try to mitigate them. That process, however, must also satisfy regulatory standards. "This is where the data and AI standards, governance frameworks and the quality of data decisions come into the picture," Sukumaran said. "The adoption is a bit slow, but it's improving." 

Data sovereignty and the cloud 

Allianz's data platforms are located in Australia to manage customer data domestically.  To support this, Allianz uses a multi-vendor cloud strategy. "This is a choice based on capability and fit for purpose business use cases," Sukumaran said. 

The company has also developed what it calls a Future Cloud Platform (FCP), effectively a private cloud within the public cloud, designed to meet security standards. "It creates a boundary within a public cloud for Allianz with defined controls to ensure all use-cases meet Allianz standards," Sukumaran said. 

Four-month migration  

One of Allianz's major recent projects was a four-month migration from on-premise systems to the cloud with zero downtime. Previously, infrastructure additions could take 12 to 18 months end-to-end. 

Sukumaran said: " We ran both on-premise and cloud environments in parallel and engaged the business from day one. At the end of four months, we just switched over to cloud across a weekend."  

The result has been significant. "Previously, some of the AI use cases didn't have real-time data capability. We couldn't bring all the external data together or run the models fast enough. The infrastructure and the capabilities offered through a cloud solution enable us to do this," he explained. 

Prioritising use cases 

With a rising demand for AI across the business, Allianz uses a framework to balance potential business value against implementation complexity. "If a use case gives good business value and is quicker to implement, we prioritise that," Sukumaran said. 

The company has also re-architected its data infrastructure. "From all the data collected, we have created a common platform, harmonised it, and made it ready for AI. Now the data is available, building use cases is much faster," he explained.