Pavel Beránek (Generali ČP): We manage around 200 key applications. While users can report issues, our monitoring gives us a head start in addressing them

July 11, 2023

As digitalization advances, the complexity and number of systems in insurance companies are increasing. This presents a significant challenge for IT departments. “We encounter several incidents within minutes to hours, ranging from common issues like CPU overload or disk space shortages to critical ones that disrupt application functionality, where application monitoring becomes crucial,” says Pavel Beránek, IT Operations Manager at Generali Česká pojišťovna.

• Who are the clients of an insurance company’s IT department?
• How is IoT being utilized in insurance services, and where are the untapped potentials?
• How does the insurance company approach system incident resolution?
• How is cloud adoption and process automation progressing at Generali Česká pojišťovna?
• What defines a quality senior IT professional in the insurance sector today?

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Ivana Karhanová: Insurance IT departments face challenges as the market evolves, with increasing pressure for speed and innovation. The necessity for cloud adoption is overwhelming all market players, with the number of systems and overall complexity continually rising. How is Generali Česká pojišťovna, a top player in the Czech market based on written premiums, managing this? We have Pavel Beránek, IT Operations Manager at Generali Česká pojišťovna, with us today. Hello.

Pavel Beránek: Hello to you and our listeners.

Ivana Karhanová: How would you simply describe the IT department in an insurance company?

Pavel Beránek: Interesting question. IT in insurance isn’t much different from the standard IT world. You find IT in many corporations across various industries, and I think the basics are the same everywhere. There are always IT processes to maintain, development to pursue, and infrastructure to care for. What makes it specific here is the customer, to whom we deliver the service.

Ivana Karhanová: And who is the customer of the IT department at Generali?

Pavel Beránek: We have many customers internally. They are our employees, the front office or business service, which further divides into sales channels, and ultimately the clients themselves.

Ivana Karhanová: How closely related is the client to the IT department in an insurance company? Ideally, I pay my premium and don’t need to know much about the insurer.

Pavel Beránek: That’s the better scenario, not knowing much about the insurer, meaning everything works well. What IT does in an insurance company, from my professional perspective, is support processes. There are business-driven processes or those delivering business to customers, whether it’s claims processes or new policy agreements. These processes need application support, and in today’s world, it’s impossible to operate without applications. The old days of offline policy agreements are gone. We now live in a digital world, increasing the importance of IT.

Ivana Karhanová: Another segment in insurance that interests me is business analysis. Besides calculating risks, I assume they try to innovate and adapt to market trends, finding ways to make services cheaper or better.

Pavel Beránek: Business analysis is integral to our world. It’s about innovations and turning ideas into code, like sales applications. But it’s not just about business analysis. It’s also about tracking trends, including in technology, which IT must monitor. IT is a business partner, not unilateral, but a symbiosis. We come with technological innovations and integrate them with business to bring them to life.

Ivana Karhanová: When did business start seeing you as a partner rather than just a service provider?

Pavel Beránek: That’s an eternal question. Sometimes I feel more in one role, sometimes in the other. But when I interact with business colleagues, I sense we are partners, acknowledging our mutual dependency. Today, I am nothing without business. Business creates the company’s added value, profit, and the regulations I need to operate, invest in infrastructure, and educate people. Conversely, without IT, business would have to revert to the outdated method of carrying binders, which will never happen again as customer expectations have drastically changed. We need each other.

Ivana Karhanová: How important is the use of real-time or online data for insurance companies?

Pavel Beránek: Real-time data is becoming increasingly crucial for insurance companies. We must respond swiftly to what’s happening, both in claims processes and in understanding customer behavior. We have many tools aiding us in this. While not a regular part of operations, we have proofs of concept (PoCs) exploring this. We play with online data from IoT devices, reacting to it, including benefits for clients. For instance, in life insurance, if our clients show a certain level of physical activity, we can refund part of their insurance costs.

Ivana Karhanová: I imagine this involves sharing data from smartwatches or other apps with the insurance company.

Pavel Beránek: Exactly. We have a specific app that collects data on physical activities, and based on that, users receive credits converted into bonuses.

Ivana Karhanová: Speaking of IoT, the only application I know in insurance relates mostly to property insurance, essentially non-life insurance.

Pavel Beránek: We haven’t ventured there yet. We’ve considered using IoT devices, like sensors in homes, but both we and our clients need to reach a consensus. It’s not straightforward in terms of device connectivity, data acquisition, and from a pragmatic standpoint, the costs associated with devices and their operation, which would increase the insurance premium.

Ivana Karhanová: So, there’s no business case for it yet.

Pavel Beránek: Correct, there’s no business case yet, and it also depends on the customer portfolio composition.

Ivana Karhanová: So, where are you applying IoT in PoCs?

Pavel Beránek: Currently, we don’t have open PoCs involving IoT. I only mentioned our app that collects online data on sporting activities, but we’re not using IoT right now.

Ivana Karhanová: At the start of the podcast, I mentioned the cloud. The pressure for cloud adoption and moving everything possible into the cloud is increasing across businesses. What’s the situation in the insurance sector in the Czech Republic?

Pavel Beránek: I believe the pressure isn’t necessarily from the business side, as business visions are based on application functionalities and parameters they want IT to deliver. I view the cloud more as a technological layer.

Ivana Karhanová: For you, it’s a tool.

Pavel Beránek: Yes, for me, it’s a tool with specific parameters and costs that I need to work with. We’re here to deliver what the business wants and choose the best platform for it, whether that’s on-premise or cloud. Cloud is useful for specific use cases where it makes sense for our corporation, especially for trying out new technologies or handling performance peaks. However, being a large corporation, we have many data centers in Europe and plenty of hardware, so we primarily focus on utilizing these internal resources. Then we look to the cloud when we need to fill a specific use case that we don’t have an internal pattern for.

Ivana Karhanová: I spoke with Václav Dorazil, Head of Data at Eurowag, who said the business tells him, “Keep the data wherever you want, even in a fridge, just give it to us when we need it.” Does Generali operate similarly?

Pavel Beránek: That’s a good one. Storing data is an interesting issue. Legally, we must strictly ensure data is kept within the European Union and comply with security and other regulations.

Ivana Karhanová: You are a regulated entity.

Pavel Beránek: Exactly. We have restrictions, such as not using cloud services from the Asian region or America. However, I don’t see it as an obstacle today. The regulatory bodies understand the potential of this technology and its common usage in companies. The concept of storing data in a public cloud, once unthinkable, is now normal with the advent of major cloud providers like Microsoft, AWS, and Google. With the right conditions, we can store data in the cloud, as seen with services like Microsoft 365, where using email or OneDrive means your data is instantly in the cloud.

Ivana Karhanová: Besides the cloud, you mentioned complexity—the number of systems, core systems, and the complexity of their architecture is constantly increasing. How many applications does Generali have?

Pavel Beránek: In total, there are around a thousand, counting every small application within Generali. If we talk about core applications, there are around 200 top applications, with a subset of these being critical to business operations.

Ivana Karhanová: How many of them are truly critical, without which the insurance business cannot operate?

Pavel Beránek: It drops to dozens. These are the applications that support the core business, including both back office and front office functions, covering client management, payments, claim settlements, and new financial product sales.

Ivana Karhanová: How do you ensure that nothing collapses, or rather, that you can identify potential issues before they escalate?

Pavel Beránek: This is where monitoring tools play a crucial role, allowing us to foresee and respond to emerging issues. Advanced application monitoring helps us detect when something starts going wrong, providing us with a head start in addressing incidents.

Ivana Karhanová: So, how often do incidents occur in a large corporation like Generali Česká pojišťovna?

Pavel Beránek: Incidents happen all the time, varying from common to critical. Our monitoring systems help distinguish and manage these, with full stack monitoring offering a comprehensive view to guide and accelerate resolution processes.

Ivana Karhanová: What defines a good IT senior in the insurance sector?

Pavel Beránek: Beyond age, it’s about knowledge and skills, which are increasingly focused on automation and technological innovations. The demand for upskilling and reskilling is high, given the fast-evolving requirements and the tight labor market.

Ivana Karhanová: Pavel Beránek, IT Operations Manager at Generali Česká pojišťovna, thank you for the insightful discussion and for joining us in the studio.

Pavel Beránek: Thank you as well.