nib Group has announced a significant technological advancement in its operations, having transitioned over 95% of its in-house data processing to the cloud, specifically choosing Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its platform.
This move is part of nib's cloud-first initiative, successfully completed in February, with the subsequent shutdown of its seven data centres – five in Australia and two in New Zealand – by March.
Nib chief information officer Brendan Mills outlined the strategic rationale behind the shift to AWS, emphasising the pivotal role of artificial intelligence in enhancing the company's services to its customers.
“AWS allows nib to expand its current use and future exploration of artificial intelligence (AI) and the ways that AI might drive nib's consumer-facing businesses as they grow to support Australians managing their everyday health,” he said. “The move is very much a strategic decision on many fronts. We are confident about the environment; AWS provides us with agility and flexibility. It allows nib to build capability in the way we operate our business and contain costs.”
This migration commenced with the shift of nib's corporate health insurance segment, GU Health, to AWS in 2019.
The post-migration era sees nib managing a vast array of workloads through AWS, utilising micro-services and serverless computing.
Rianne Van Veldhuizen, managing director for AWS Australia and New Zealand, highlighted the rapid modernisation within the healthcare insurance sector, emphasising nib's leadership in adopting technological solutions to improve member outcomes.
“nib has been at the forefront of leveraging the depth and breadth of our services since 2017, especially in the use of AI and machine learning,” she said. “Migrating 95% of its workloads to AWS has allowed nib to remain resilient and agile, extract key business insights, develop personalised member experiences, and improve the cost and operational efficiency for members.”
Jamie Simon, director, banking and financial services at AWS, added: “From our point of view, in terms of customers we are working with, we see nib being very well progressed relative to peers in how far they've gone with the cloud migration. Certainly, with all their existing data centres [migrating to the cloud], I'm not aware of anybody else in Australia that has done that.”
