CASE STUDY
Ping An: Life Insurance Platform Integration
Ping An launched a pilot digital solution to enhance agent planning, increase sales performance, and improve its life insurance business.
5-minute read
Call for change
Established in 1988, Ping An is a world-leading retail financial services group—it has 227 million retail customers and total assets of RMB10.1 trillion (US$1.5 trillion, 2021).
Its legacy technology includes a large number of front-end applications supported by hundreds of systems. Each application carried abundant business logic, resulting in less-than-optimal front-end applications and difficulties in system maintenance.
In the past, the business-oriented micro-services system could not provide clear business or application boundaries. This led to insufficient integration between micro-services and a lack of sharing between systems, which together prevented the development of the supportive climate required for innovation within the business. There was duplication in the positioning and functions of the insurer’s multiple platforms, which caused great confusion among users and impeded the unification of data.
When tech meets human ingenuity
In 2021, Ping An Life Insurance introduced the Domain-Driven Design (DDD) methodology into its construction channel to unify its enterprise architecture, reconstruct its business model and re-use its business service capabilities.
The design core of DDD is the domain model, meaning it is a representation of meaningful real-world concepts pertinent to the domain that need to be modeled in software. With the provision of business insights by Accenture, domain models are systematically abstracted and structured to directly reflect business knowledge.
By constructing the middle platform based on the domain model, the insurer aimed to better deal with business and customer needs, reduce manual operations and reduce dependency on the outdated.
With the provision of business insights by Accenture, domain models are systematically abstracted and structured to directly reflect business knowledge.
A valuable difference
The solution introduced an enterprise architecture to segment the life insurance channel business:
- Horizontal sub-division: The channel’s middle-layer platform is horizontally sub-divided with three types for core domain functions that support the core capabilities of agents, the core processes for the entire insurance business and the supporting domain that underpins the core business.
- Multi-layer re-use: Aggregations, entities, value objects, domain events and services are designed and aggregated within the same domain boundary to provide shared capabilities.
- Unified tasks: The solution will enable the planning and creation of services for recruitment, training, performance, capacity, management and other scenarios.
- Efficient collaboration: Business and IT specialists are grouped for better collaboration under specific domains.
By integrating application, reusing light coding and business support:
25%
Service re-use rate
30%
Reduction in development time
Redundant functions are identified and integrated into domains, which saves the IT maintenance cost and enhances user experience.
Traditionally, generic functions (e.g., Task, Planning, Authorization, Meetings) are developed separately under different main functions using different design. By our design, generic domains would be reused and applied to more core domains, which would save time for redeveloping. For instance, some AI algorithmic capabilities including NLP, NLU, and intelligent assistance are integrated by the generic domain “Strategy Center" to support multiple business scenarios such as Human-Machine Training and Online Meeting.
In general, a common barrier to digitalization transforming companies is that the IT solution reacts slowly to align with innovations, new ideas, evolving business models, and unstable business strategies. It also comes at a high cost and perceived inconvenience to management. The functions are clearly structured to modularized products, like Lego, which allows for a quick assembly without heavy coding work.
Applications developed under DDD effectively support channel sales and management. Through digital recruitment and training, efficiency enhancement and cost savings in end-to-end sales productivity are both achieved.
Accenture assisted in providing business insights and DDD implementation experience for better understanding and supporting business processes.
Our leaders
Yongpan Qiu
Managing Director – Financial Services Lead, Greater China
Mark Ye
Managing Director – Strategy and Consulting, Greater China
Leo Yang
Senior Manager – Financial Services, Greater China
Xinbo Li
Senior Manager – Strategy and Consulting, Greater China