PNB MetLife Planning to Migrate Its Apps to Cloud

How is PNB MetLife leveraging technology to drive efficiency?
The biggest challenge for us is to improve our efficiency. This is possible only if we build an operating model that enables our distributors to sell and service customers easily. From a customer’s standpoint, this entails making our solution available as they need it, when they need it. We have to therefore operate in a 24X7 environment, and be available on a multi-channel platform.

IT plays a key role in the BFSI sector in terms of standardization, automation or monitoring performance of processes.

To achieve these goals, we started our investment in technology in a big way since 2007. Investing in imaging and workflow technology enabled us to multiply our processing capability and our presence. As a result of which, today with the same headcount, we are able to process six times more business. PNB has more than 7000 branches. If we have to service and sell through these branches, there is no other option but to bank on technology to reach out to last employee in the bank (who is the seller of insurance) and to reach out to over 70 million customers who walk in to the branches every now and then. 

Mobility can go a long way in increasing your reach. Are you working on this front?
Yes. Mobility is the next big focus area for us, both from a customer’s standpoint and from a distributor’s standpoint. We have come up with ‘e-branch’, a mobile solution which makes the necessity of a physical branch redundant. A distributor, whether it is an agency distributor or a bank distributor, through a mobile device (Android or IOS) can do any activity that he could previously do through a branch. Another area of focus is Analytics. We are seeing how we can harness it to improve the cross-sell ratio, mine into the bank database to build a better sales model and a better need-based product model. In terms of priority the big focus areas are Mobility and Analytics. 

What incremental revenue do you expect from this initiative?
We are hopeful that we will be able to expand our business and presence in the market and get a broader base and distributor base besides offering more services to the end consumer. The key thing for us is to expand to markets and geographies where we were otherwise not present. This will expand our presence in the market especially in the Tier 3 and 4 towns which we were otherwise not present in. 

Are you evaluating cloud as well? Security concerns around cloud make it tough for anybody in the BFSI sector to go towards it. What are your thoughts on it?
Cloud is going to be a reality especially when we talk about efficiency and multiple applications being hosted. I don’t think that any organization would be able to invest to that level with the kind of complexity that we are now talking about. For any organization going forward, leveraging cloud at least for 30-40-50% of the applications they host is going to be a reality.  We are ourselves working towards that and weighing possible options too. 

Which applications would you migrate to the cloud and by when?
We would look at applications particularly in the mobility sector, for instance, portals that an insurance company should have. These applications are a fit case for hosting into cloud. We would be doing this in a medium time frame i.e., 6-18 months. 

As you are all set to invest on mobility and analytics in 2014-15, how do you intend to convince your top management for this capex?
Yes, the focus area from our organizational standpoint is mainly on mobility and analytics. The top 5-6 insurance companies are all gearing up for investing in technology to get the right and need-based sales approach, and cross sell opportunities through analytics. Most CXOs are looking at ways to increase investment in IT and asking what are the newer technologies that we must adopt to make our business faster, increase our productivity, increase our speed-to-market, and increase our availability to the consumer. From MetLife’s perspective, we want to be the best. We are always looking at how we can be better than the market, and how we can exceed the benchmarks available in the market. We depend a lot on IT to leverage on both these fronts. Budget, thefore, would not be a problem for us.

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