Leading general insurer Santam has become the first insurer in Africa to fully migrate its core insurance platform to the cloud.
After more than two years of planning and testing, Santam moved its core system powered by Guidewire onto a cloud-based environment. Santam first adopted Guidewire in 2012 to move away from heavily customised legacy systems.
The latest migration builds on that decision, allowing the company to tap into advanced capabilities such as rapid scaling during peak demand, real-time system monitoring and faster deployment of new features.
The platform underpins critical functions such as policy management, claims processing and billing, effectively acting as the engine of the insurer’s daily operations.
Long-term sustainability
Sam Nkosi, Santam chief information officer, said the decision was driven by long-term sustainability rather than short-term gains.
“On premises infrastructure naturally becomes more expensive, less flexible and harder to scale over time.
“Cloud environments, by contrast, provide significantly higher resilience and recovery capabilities, while innovation cycles are much faster, providing a stronger foundation for digital, data and AI driven capabilities,” said Nkosi.
This comes as global insurers are under pressure from technology-driven competitors and rising customer expectations.
Bottleneck for innovation
He said legacy systems, often built decades ago, have become a bottleneck for innovation, and this has made it difficult to launch new products or respond quickly to market changes.
He said the operational impact is immediate for Santam, and teams that once spent time maintaining physical infrastructure can now focus on improving products and customer experience.
“Our teams now spend far less time managing hardware and infrastructure and more time focusing on business improvements and customer value.
“Updates, maintenance and scaling are handled in a far more automated and predictable way, removing the need for costly, cumbersome and business-impacting upgrades and allowing teams to collaborate more closely and respond faster to change,” said Nkosi.
The benefits for customers, while less visible at first, are expected to build over time. Faster claims processing, fewer system outages and more consistent service across brokers, call centres and digital platforms are among the anticipated improvements.
Efficient handling of disruptions
Cloud infrastructure also changes how the company handles disruptions, instead of relying on a single data centre, systems now operate across multiple locations with built-in backups and failover mechanisms.
“Instead of relying on a single physical location, systems now run across multiple availability zones, with automated backups, built in recovery processes and failover mechanisms. This significantly reduces the risk of downtime and allows Santam to recover faster from unexpected events without impacting clients,” said Nkosi.
“This investment signals that Santam is focused on long-term resilience and customer experience, not just short term efficiency. It reflects our intent to serve customers better in an increasingly digital, always on world, while remaining a stable and trusted insurer,” he added.
- Santam is the first insurer in Africa to fully migrate its core insurance platform to the cloud, after more than two years of planning and testing.
- The cloud migration enhances capabilities such as rapid scaling, real-time monitoring, faster feature deployment, and supports critical functions like policy management and claims processing.
- The move was motivated by long-term sustainability goals, offering greater resilience, faster innovation cycles, and reducing reliance on costly, inflexible on-premises infrastructure.
- Transitioning to cloud infrastructure allows Santam’s teams to focus more on product improvement and customer experience rather than maintaining physical hardware.
- Customers are expected to benefit through faster claims processing, fewer outages, consistent service delivery, and improved disruption handling thanks to multi-location system backups and failover mechanisms.
After more than two years of planning and testing, Santam moved its core system powered by Guidewire onto a cloud-based environment. Santam first adopted Guidewire in 2012 to move away from heavily customised legacy systems.
Sam
“On premises infrastructure naturally becomes more expensive, less flexible and harder to scale over time.
“Cloud environments, by contrast, provide significantly higher resilience and recovery capabilities, while innovation cycles are much faster, providing a stronger foundation for digital, data and AI driven capabilities,” said
He said legacy systems, often built decades ago, have become a bottleneck for innovation, and this has made it difficult to launch new products or respond quickly to market changes.
He said the operational impact is immediate for Santam, and teams that once spent time maintaining physical infrastructure can now focus on improving products and customer experience.
“Our teams now spend far less time managing hardware and infrastructure and more time focusing on business improvements and customer value.
“Updates, maintenance and scaling are handled in a far more automated and predictable way, removing the need for costly, cumbersome and business-impacting upgrades and allowing teams to collaborate more closely and respond faster to change,” said
Cloud infrastructure also changes how the company handles disruptions, instead of relying on a single data centre, systems now operate across multiple locations with built-in backups and failover mechanisms.
“Instead of relying on a single physical location, systems now run across multiple availability zones, with automated backups, built in recovery processes and failover mechanisms.
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