Embracing a development opportunity

Focus on simplicity, mobility, and security

INTER Insurance Group is an independent medium-sized insurance company with a history of more than 100 years. Faced with the threat of industry disruption and changing consumer habits, the company wants to set its own transformation agenda.

“The insurance industry is often 10 years behind the banking industry,” says Benjamin Helbig, chief information officer, INTER Insurance Group. “We see an opportunity to close that gap.”

It plans to do this by reimagining service expectations and operational efficiency. In doing so, INTER believes it can create a competitive advantage.

It is a huge undertaking. INTER is in the process of rethinking its approach to technology, focused on the themes of simplicity, mobility, and security.

Internally, it wants technology to support a culture shift. A new innovation lab is exploring new service ideas and forging partnerships with InsurTech specialists. For customers, INTER is looking to digitize processes, streamlining the way services are delivered.

“INTER is changing to meet changing customer needs,” says Helbig. “Our customers want their interactions with the company to be faster, more immediate, and at a time of their convenience.”

Resetting technology expectations

Helbig joined INTER in 2021 to lead the modernization of IT and foster the company’s digital development. The priority, he says, was to get the business up to speed with the latest technology.

Outwardly, a visible sign of progress can be seen at INTER’s offices on the main campus in Mannheim. A lot of these offices have already been redesigned to include new coworking spaces, breakout areas, and high-performance Wi-Fi throughout. Staff have laptops, webcams, and everything they need to work remotely. There is now one, company-wide collaboration platform, where previously there were nine. The shift to a ‘work-from-everywhere’ approach has had a significant impact on productivity and efficiency.

“There was Wi-Fi before, but if you moved you lost connectivity. Today, the Wi-Fi can be trusted,” says Helbig. “Remote working is now a reality, but we want to make our offices a destination where staff want to come, meet colleagues, and discuss ideas.”

For INTER customers, a new application transforms the engagement process. Customers can now self-serve the buying of insurance products and the submitting of claims. Paper processes remain, but the primary point of contact for many is digital. Claims processing times have been cut significantly. Helbig says the new service mindset means the business is determined to reduce these times further:

“It is the Amazon Factor: everyone expects everything now.”

Less obviously, yet more critically, INTER has reset its technology expectations. When Helbig arrived, the company was facing issues with its mainframe.

“We had issues with our network connections between data centers. We needed stability and reliability. It took us three months to put a solution in place that guaranteed maximum availability.”

Afterwards, he says, INTER employees saw that technology could fix problems and raise ambitions.

Overhauling the entire network architecture

INTER Insurance Group established a new, unified network from HPE Aruba Networking. The new network addresses both campus and workplace and data center modernization projects.

The HPE Aruba Networking approach includes a unified HPE Aruba Networking DC and Campus architecture based on the CX family of switches, designed and implemented by Gigahertz, a local partner specialized in secure network infrastructures. Office wireless is delivered through HPE Aruba Networking Wi-Fi 6/6E access points. The entire network is supervised through HPE Aruba Networking AirWave, while zero-trust network access control is defined and orchestrated by HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass Policy Manager.

The data center modernization means gradual migration from mainframes. Previously, INTER hosted mainframes in two data centers located 35 kilometers apart. Today, the two new data centers are situated 100 kilometers apart to meet geo-redundancy regulations. An application modernization program has led to a reduction in the mainframe footprint and a move to a modern hybrid cloud approach.

The data center network is now based on a Spine-Leaf architecture, where the spine is composed of HPE Aruba Networking CX switches. The main campus in Mannheim operates as a wireless-only workplace, relying on HPE Aruba Networking Wi-Fi 6 & 6E access points and CX switching LAN access infrastructure.

Segmenting the network to create bespoke security policies

The new architecture has been built with security as a fundamental consideration. Both LAN and Wi-Fi are fully secured and authenticated through HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass Policy Manager, which enables the IT team to define and deploy access policies while automating the orchestration of user-based tunneling (UBT) Dynamic Segmentation. This ensures end-to-end isolation and security for device or user-to-port traffic throughout the network. The entire roll-out was overseen by Gigahertz.

“When we started this project, the brief to Gigahertz was, ‘We won’t make compromises on the technology’”, Helbig explains. “I couldn’t care less about what the brochure says. I want technology that works.

“When Gigahertz showed us HPE Aruba Networking, the decision process was easy.”

Having a trusted partner has been key to the project’s success, he adds. “I have one important rule when it comes to partners: if you build it, you run it. Gigahertz understands how important these technological choices are, they will be running our network operations. They trust HPE Aruba Networking.”

Perhaps the greatest amount of work has gone into securing the network. INTER Insurance Group manages huge amounts of personal, health, and financial data. It wants to work at speed, often across several departments, but with lock-tight security around cyber threats.

Using HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass seamless integration with INTER’s firewall policies, Gigahertz has created role-based access rules for users and devices. The rules are applied immediately and pushed out to all the switches when someone or something connects to the network, and deleted once they disconnect.

“It’s zero-trust with least-privileged access,” explains Frank Eckenfels, managing partner, Gigahertz. “We can deploy rules as needed and lock the network for anything other than authenticated access. All the switches are in essence without configuration. They’re only configured once the user connects, whichever office they use.”

The result is a seamless, secure, and high-performance network experience. INTER has shifted the focus of its IT teams from network management to future innovation. Product development cycles, which took as long as 18 months, are soon expected to be cut to three months or less.

“And that’s all down to our network platform,” says Helbig. “We’re an entirely different company to that of 2020.”