Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced that Zurich Insurance Group (Zurich) is moving its enterprise information technology (IT) infrastructure to AWS.

Zurich will use AWS’s global infrastructure, analytics, and machine learning technologies to deliver new digital customer experiences and drive automation at scale, in support of its worldwide digital strategy. As part of the multiyear strategic collaboration, Zurich will move 1,000 applications to AWS by 2025, including core insurance and SAP workloads.

Zurich will move its critical applications to AWS, simplifying, modernizing, and automating the company’s infrastructure. This approach will provide flexible and scalable application environments, enabling agile product development. Using Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon Aurora (AWS’s fully managed MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud), and AWS App Runner (AWS’s service to quickly deploy containerized web applications and APIs), Zurich will develop and bring new products to market quicker, saving approximately $30 million a year. As a result, Zurich can focus on innovation and new customer experiences, reinvesting valuable resources into new business opportunities, recruitment, and acquisition strategies. By embracing cloud technologies, Zurich will also be able to streamline and optimize its core business processes and better prepare for new reporting requirements in 2023, including alignment with international financial reporting standards—IFRS 9 and IFRS 17.

Zurich will use RISE with SAP on AWS, a fully managed offering that combines SAP’s solution and implementation experience with AWS’ experience in helping customers transform their SAP landscapes on the cloud. By migrating its SAP environment to AWS, Zurich will create a modern, cloud-based system connecting data across its entire business. The SAP workloads migration will consist of 20 landscapes, a collection of servers for a specific workload, including more than 100 individual systems such as human resources (HR) and finance. AWS’s extensive SAP experience will allow Zurich to increase the performance of its SAP applications and integrate its data with advanced analytics and machine learning services to gain predictive capabilities and enterprise-wide reporting.

Zurich works with AWS Skills Guild, a comprehensive skills enablement program that helps organizations accelerate cloud outcomes by creating excitement, increasing employee engagement, and nurturing a culture of learning. The insurance provider has already trained more than 400 employees, with plans to further grow the program. Zurich offers skills development opportunities to help attract and train new employee talent, and accelerate cloud adoption across the company.

Ericson Chan

“We want to help our retail customers lead safer and healthier lives, and bring our business customers peace of mind, by using the power of digital technologies to meet their evolving needs,”

said Zurich’s Ericson Chan, Group Chief Information and Digital Officer.

“Working with AWS will transform the way we bring solutions to market and enable us to make the most accurate and up-to-date insights available to our customers. We look forward to using the new AWS Region in Switzerland to support our regulatory reporting requirements.”

Matt Garman

“Zurich’s focus on customers and innovation over the last 150 years is why it remains a leading insurer for more than 55 million people and businesses around the world. Moving their most critical business applications to AWS allows Zurich to put data at the heart of its business to automate processes, increase efficiency, and improve customer responsiveness,”

said Matt Garman, senior vice president of Sales, Marketing, and Global Services at Amazon Web Services.

“Combining Zurich’s financial expertise with AWS’s broad functionality will help the insurer continue to evolve its business to anticipate customer needs, and provide more personalized insurance products.”