Carbon Underwriting turned to Google Cloud to build Graphene, a platform designed to revolutionize data integration and transparency in the insurance sector. Using the suite of managed services from Google Cloud, the team began its journey from manually processed spreadsheets to a fully automated, real-time SaaS solution. "The support from Google Cloud and its focus on the insurance market helped us realize the benefits of working hand in hand with a cloud provider from an early stage," Dhuti explains.

Carbon Underwriting also eliminated the need for traditional infrastructure management by using serverless offerings such as Cloud Run, Cloud Composer, and Cloud Build. This ensures seamless scalability while keeping costs low, which supports the company’s operational efficiency goals. Additionally, the integration of large language models like Gemini has automated complex tasks such as categorizing claim descriptions and occupancy data. These processes would previously have required months of manual data science and ML model training. With Gemini, the team can deploy microservices and streamline categorization pipelines in a matter of days.

To tackle an industry-specific challenge, Carbon Underwriting also built Graphene Studio, a proprietary drag-and-drop, no-code tool designed for insurance. This feature enables the company’s data operations team to automate workflows, apply data transformations, and address issues of data integrity more efficiently, complete with an audit trail for greater accountability. With all of these combined solutions, Carbon Underwriting’s small team delivered a robust architecture that aligns with its long-term goal to sustainably redefine insurance operations.

Carbon Underwriting saw immediate results from its collaboration with Google Cloud. With the platform’s speed and reliability, the company’s engineering team built a fully operational minimum viable product of Graphene X in just three months. This saved an estimated 8 to 12 months of development time and empowered teams to achieve the same results with 50% less resources.

The financial payoff was equally impactful. Carbon Underwriting grew its Gross Written Premiums from just £15 million in its first year of operation to over £300 million within five years. The company achieved this growth while maintaining low operational expenses, with initial cloud bills below £1,000 per year. By equipping team members with user-friendly Google Cloud services and documentation, Carbon Underwriting can free up developers to focus on innovation rather than being consumed by operational overhead.

"We’re a lean team operating an entire ecosystem on Google Cloud," Dhuti says. "This is only possible because of how Google Cloud is structured and the reliability it provides."

Perhaps most importantly, Carbon Underwriting is succeeding in its mission to modernize the London insurance market. By building Graphene Insights and Graphene Studio with Google Cloud, the company is delivering unprecedented transparency across the value chain, enabling instant data access and decision-making for coverholders, underwriters, and reinsurers. Today, Carbon Underwriting has become an example of how new technologies can rejuvenate even the most traditional of industries.