Sequis Life: Driving innovation and agility to improve customer experience with Google Cloud
About Sequis Life
Sequis is the primary corporate identity that houses PT Asuransi Jiwa Sequis Life and other businesses. Established in 1984, Sequis Life now serves Indonesian people through seven customer service centers in six cities, Jakarta, Medan, Bandung, Surabaya, Denpasar, and Semarang, as well as 80+ sales offices in 28 cities in Indonesia.
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Contact usWith Google Cloud, Sequis is accelerating innovation and gaining the agility required to succeed in the fast-changing Indonesian insurance market, while continuing to meet rigorous regulatory requirements.
Google Cloud results
- Enables deployment multiple times per day to Sequis websites
- Meets scalability requirements
- Ensures business complies with strict financial services regulatory obligations in Indonesia
Insurers in Indonesia face challenges ranging from uncertain financial markets and competition from market entrants skilled in digital business models, to adapting to the needs of a fast-growing affluent middle class. However, digital transformation and cloud strategy presents opportunities for insurance providers to position themselves to succeed in this new normal by streamlining sales and support processes, creating, testing, and adapting new products quickly, and tailoring financial models to accommodate evolving circumstances.
Enables digital specialists to develop products and programs to improve customer experiences and boost the organization’s competitiveness
Providers must be prudent and disciplined in their approach to change. They must continue to comply with strict regulations imposed by Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK), the Financial Services Authority of Indonesia, to maintain a stable financial system and protect consumers. In addition, providers must also invest in training and resources to ensure compliance with International Financial Reporting Standard 17, which establishes requirements for insurance contracts accounting.
Sequis is embracing digital transformation and the cloud to achieve its ambition of becoming the country’s leading life and health insurer. The brand is the primary corporate identity that houses PT Asuransi Jiwa Sequis Life, which markets individual and group life and health insurance through agency channels; PT Asuransi Jiwa Sequis Financial, which markets individual insurance through banks and non-bank partnership distribution and telemarketing as well as group life and health insurance through an employee benefit business; and PT Sequis Aset Manajemen, an investment manager company that markets mutual funds products.
Established in 1984, Sequis Life now serves Indonesian people through seven customer service centers in six cities, Jakarta, Medan, Bandung, Surabaya, Denpasar, and Semarang, as well as 80+ sales offices in 28 cities in Indonesia.
By the end of 2019, Sequis Life owned total assets of Rp18.8 trillion, more than 390,000 policies, and was supported by more than 800 employees and 10,900 professional agents. PT Asuransi Jiwa Sequis Life, PT Asuransi Jiwa Sequis Financial, and PT Sequis Aset Manajemen are registered and supervised by Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK).
“A key reason for selecting Google Cloud was our ability to comply with data residency regulations by using a cloud data center in Indonesia.”
—Marlin Sugama, Chief Digital Officer, Sequis LifeSecurity and reliability key priorities
To execute its transformation program, Sequis Life needed to work with a technology supplier that would meet OJK requirements to secure customers’ sensitive data; deliver highly available service to give customers confidence they can trust the business with their investments; and, by digitizing operational procedures, reduce its customer acquisition cost by 40%, from $150 per customer to about $90. Furthermore, the business required implementation and consultant support to help drive continuous cost efficiency and optimize performance.
The organization evaluated potential providers and began running some non-production services not related to the build development environment, such as Healthcare API (while this is an excellent service, the data pool does not match the Indonesian population), in Google Cloud to assess compatibility with existing on-premises core systems and obtain a ballpark cost-benefit comparison against alternative options. “The overall process took about one year, primarily because we needed to check compliance and regulatory approval for our plan,” explains Marlin Sugama, Chief Digital Officer at Sequis Life.
“For websites, we can deploy multiple times per day, while for mobile apps, we update monthly to minimize disruption to our users.”
—Marlin Sugama, Chief Digital Officer, Sequis LifeBased on its evaluation and preliminary work, Sequis Life found Google Cloud met all these requirements while enabling compliance. “We must propose all the solutions and services we use in our technology stack for review and approval by our company management, OJK, and the Ministry of ICT (Information and Communications Technology),” explains Marlin. “Google Cloud had to share its relevant ISO and PCI DSS certifications, engage an Indonesian entity to resell its services, and provide auditable support capabilities to be approved, and did so.”
“A key reason for selecting Google Cloud was our ability to comply with data residency regulations by using a cloud data center in Indonesia. Indonesian Government regulations for financial businesses based in the country stipulate that data cannot be stored or processed offshore.”
Sequis Life engaged its regulatory and compliance consultant, KPMG to ensure its development plans met its certification obligations. KPMG helped the business report to regulators and audit the cybersecurity of the systems used by its Innovation Lab (INLAB) team, a department that brings together digital product development specialists to design products and services that can improve the experience of its customers.
Furthermore, Google Cloud connected the organization to implementation partner FISClouds to jump-start the setup of a DevOps environment. FISClouds helped set up the architecture for Google Cloud and the Anthos managed application platform slated to manage Sequis Life’s hybrid, multicloud environment and shared its knowledge about how to maintain this environment.
“In the short term, Google Cloud enables us to share infrastructure risks and use DevOps as the basis of our development environment.”
—Marlin Sugama, Chief Digital Officer, Sequis LifeAnthos and Google Kubernetes Engine power success
As well as Anthos, Sequis Life is using a range of Google Cloud products and services to run its infrastructure, including Google Kubernetes Engine to orchestrate cloud resources and future proof the organization’s app development by delivering stability and flexibility.
With Google Cloud, Sequis Life has established a microservices architecture that enables its INLAB team to accelerate innovation. By breaking down applications into individual loosely coupled services, a microservices architecture enables teams to make changes to specific services, rather than to a full codebase as required in a monolithic application environment.
This architecture improves scalability, speed to market for new applications and features, and is the cornerstone of Sequis Life Innovation Lab’s agile DevOps development approach.
“For websites, we can deploy multiple times per day, while for mobile apps, we update monthly to minimize disruption to our users,” says Marlin.
“In the short term, Google Cloud enables us to share infrastructure risks and use DevOps as the basis of our development environment,” she adds. “In the long run, we are hoping to further optimize costs and maintain the agility of our digital platform deployment.”
The business is also planning to use data management-related services such as the BigQuery analytics data warehouse and Google Cloud machine learning and AI products to provide a high-quality digital experience to its customers. “At INLAB, data is our Holy Grail: we have data-driven development,” continues Marlin. “In the INLAB team, we have product growth managers that continuously implement data and develop algorithms for predictive analytics, and we have user experience researchers that collect and analyze quantitative data. Combine these and we obtain actionable insights for our developments.
“With Google Cloud we can add to our capabilities in this area.”
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About Sequis Life
Sequis is the primary corporate identity that houses PT Asuransi Jiwa Sequis Life and other businesses. Established in 1984, Sequis Life now serves Indonesian people through seven customer service centers in six cities, Jakarta, Medan, Bandung, Surabaya, Denpasar, and Semarang, as well as 80+ sales offices in 28 cities in Indonesia.