IAG is the parent company of trusted insurance brands across Australia, New Zealand, and Asia, employing around 15,000 people. IAG’s purpose is to make its customers’ world a safer place and provide the security for them to be able to plan for tomorrow.
The insurance industry is changing rapidly. As a large organisation, IAG needed to evolve and increase the speed at which it responds to change to better serve its customers’ needs. Customer experience needed to take centre stage, while also driving sales and lowering the cost to serve those customers.
Together with Thoughtworks, IAG looked to adapt its operations, taking a lean transformation approach, which meant simplifying processes and systems, and optimising resources to be more efficient. We began by leveraging visual systems to manage and create better visibility of all work. We then helped redefine the way IAG prioritises and funds projects, by incorporating lean canvas as a business model framework and experimentation early in the process. On the technical side, we implemented continuous delivery, created an API strategy, improved the architecture strategy, and moved to the cloud.
If you stand back and you think about what we have achieved over that period of time, it's jaw dropping. We have mobilised one of the nation's most traditional, historical businesses. We have created an extraordinary amount of capacity to deliver in a lean and agile way, and I have to thank Thoughtworks for that.
IAG has been able to build an environment which allows for ideas to be quickly tested and validated, and a capacity to pivot and adapt with speed to ensure it delivers value to its customers, at a lower cost, risk and time to market.
To view the more in-depth interview with IAG CEO, Peter Harmer, see this video.
