AWS & FWD: Reinventing the Future of Digital Insurance
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Published Time: 2025-09-15T16:23:45Z
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AWS & FWD: Reinventing the Future of Digital Insurance
September 15, 2025
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AWS & FWD: Reinventing the future of digital insurance
Chad Hersh, Head of Worldwide Market Development, Life Insurance at AWS on enabling cloud-first and customer-centric transformation at FWD insurance
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Company portals
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
FWD Life Insurance Public Company Limited
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AWSFWDDigital InsuranceChad Hershwomen in insurance
There are good reasons why AWS is one of the world's most successful and trusted cloud service providers. Global capabilities but local presence, a continuous culture of industry-leading innovation and collaborative development, and some of the most advanced digital solutions in the industry, to name a few.
These capabilities and more help clients in the insurance industry transform the way they operate, enabling them to modernise core systems more efficiently, harness the power of data, and deliver new and innovative experiences to customers.
“As well as providing an incredibly wide array of technology capabilities, from cloud infrastructure and a full range of data and analytics solution to AI, ML and agentic capabilities, we also build industry-specific accelerators that help insurers get more value from their cloud and AI transformations,” says Chad Hersh, Head of Worldwide Market Development, Life Insurance at AWS.
“A great example of this is Insurance Lake,” says Chad. “It’s an insurance-specific data lake accelerator that’s easy to implement, low cost to run, open source with no license costs, and built from the ground up to support insurance data.”
Changing the way people view insurance
An example of how AWS enables cloud-first and customer-centric transformations is its partnership with innovative pan-Asian firm FWD Insurance. Unlike many in what is still a traditional industry, FWD is a digital-first and technology-driven company with a vision to change the way people feel about insurance.
“Technology is crucial to this,” says FWD’s Group Chief Technology and Operations Officer Sandeep Pandey. “We have a very clear strategy and AWS has been a key partner for our platform and architecture across the experience layer, process layer, integration layer and infrastructure.”
Chad points to three fundamental pillars that distinguish AWS in the market when working with partners like FWD: a very comprehensive solution portfolio that goes far beyond cloud to power everything from customer service to risk, proven experience and a strong culture of innovation.
Supporting transformation at FWD
FWD began its cloud-first strategy in 2020. The company announced a five-year agreement with AWS in 2024, focused on driving FWD’s AI and ML programmes, improving data-driven decision making, and customer-focused innovation.
“There are three core areas where we’ve helped with FWD’s digital transformation,” Chad notes. “The first is FinOps, where we’ve delivered a centralised finance cloud hub that revolutionised financial data management, enabled faster closing periods, brought significant operational efficiencies and improved ROI through streamlined processes.
“On customer experience, we’re powering FWD’s Omne app, which enhances customer engagement through Gen AI features like digital avatars, BI dashboards and automation,” he notes. “Thirdly, for digital innovation, we’ve supported FWD’s Cloud Academy training solution, helping more than 600 employees.”
AWS has also enabled operations and risk management through FWD’s Shared Service Centre. “Results include 60% faster new product release, test cycles reduced from 30 days to one week, 50% increase in the frequency of IT releases and 30% cost savings,” Chad reports.
AWS will continue to support FWD’s transformation. “Our partnership demonstrates how our comprehensive capabilities drive meaningful transformation and help set new standards for operational excellence and customer experience, which is where FWD is focused.
“Building on what we’ve already developed, AI and agentic solutions will rise in prominence,” says Chad, “particularly Gen AI implementation into different areas like intelligent call centres or ‘generative business intelligence,’ which gives a more holistic view of customers, markets, risk and more. Technology is technology. For us it’s about how we bring new capabilities into the business, its processes and infrastructure, and the customer experience. It has to be meaningful.”
Company Portals
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
FWD Life Insurance Public Company Limited
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