AIA Group's cutting-edge infrastructure and analytics earn prestigious HKB Technology Excellence Awards 2024

Its TDA initiative has been implemented to support the company’s vision of modernising the organisation and gaining advantage through advanced solutions.

Life insurance company AIA Group brought home two major accolades at the coveted HKB Technology Excellence Awards 2024 for realising its vision of becoming the leader as a ‘digital insurer’ amongst industry peers in support of its bigger goal of modernising the organisation.

This vision started in August 2020 when the company launched its Technology, Digital, and Analytics (TDA) initiative. This initiative was designed to enhance the company’s competitive advantages and promote growth with an investment of approximately US$800m over three years.

The project resulted in over US$150m in annual savings from expense and claims efficiencies. In parallel, AIA’s talent pool has expanded by over 70%, ensuring that it has the skills necessary to leverage new technological capabilities. 

AIA’s distribution channels are now fully digitally enabled, which has resulted in US$1.2b in annualised new premium sales through digital leads. As of December 2023, 85% of the company’s transactions have been processed end-to-end without human intervention.

The TDA initiative has enabled AIA to successfully implement powerful digital tools that span the entire agency value chain. These tools have supported agency growth, elevated professionalism, and enhanced productivity by enabling agents to focus on providing high-quality advice to customers.

By adopting a digitally-led approach to bank distribution, AIA has effectively addressed the limitations of the traditional in-branch sales model. This strategy allows seamless integration with bank partners to access their customers in real-time using the plug-and-play, modular systems. Combining bank customer data with advanced analytics ensures that leads are optimally allocated to insurance specialists.

In addition, AIA+ SuperApp has significantly enhanced customer interactions with personalised digital experiences and integrated services across life, health, and wellness. This extensive app usage has boosted engagement, leads, conversion, and repurchase rates.

With over 20 million registered digital users, AIA has achieved an impressive milestone where seven of its markets scored first in Net Promoter Score, demonstrating the high satisfaction from customers.

Meanwhile, AIA’s legacy infrastructure has required a comprehensive overhaul to align with the dynamic needs of modern customers and improve operational efficiency. The Cloud-Powered Transformation, part of AIA’s larger TDA initiative, aimed to address these challenges. 

This project involved a large-scale migration of approximately 9,000 workloads to Microsoft Azure, modernising applications and eliminating end-of-life technologies. The use of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform facilitated automatic cloud provisioning, significantly increasing deployment speed and scalability. Hosting 90% of its technology infrastructure on the cloud has doubled its compute power and has created significant cost efficiencies.

These successes underpin AIA’s strategic vision of driving digital transformation and operational excellence. “Our commitment to leveraging advanced technologies to drive efficiency, enhance customer experience, and achieve long-term strategic goals positions us as a deserving candidate,” the company said.

AIA claims the win in the Infrastructure Technology - Life Insurance category for the Cloud-powered Transformation project, whilst it brings home the Analytics - Life Insurance for the broader TDA initiative.

The HKB Technology Excellence Awards celebrates innovation and excellence in Hong Kong's dynamic tech landscape, highlighting companies that lead the way in technological disruptions within their industries.