Insurance industry
Alibaba Finance Cloud is a regulatory-compliant cloud service provider that helps insurance companies migrate their entire systems to the cloud, from peripheral channels to core systems. It provides customized solutions for various scenarios in the insurance industry, such as electronic policies, core system migration for new insurance companies, and core system migration for life insurance companies.
Electronic policy solution
Alibaba Finance Cloud provides an integrated, cloud-based solution for electronic documents in the insurance industry. This solution is ideal for distributing, updating, querying, and archiving electronic insurance policies. This solution helps insurance companies reduce storage and distribution costs.
Business architecture
Architecture description:
The insurance business is divided into the following modules: distribution channels, receipt management, electronic policy system, core system, content and image management, and encryption and security.
- Non-core systems, such as distribution channels and receipt management, serve end customers and agents. These systems often handle high-frequency access and require significant system resources. You can deploy these resource-intensive, non-core production systems on Alibaba Finance Cloud.
- You can keep existing core systems in your on-premises data center and move non-core systems to the cloud. This hybrid cloud model ensures seamless integration between systems.
- A comprehensive security solution ensures compliance with China's national cryptographic standards and secures internet services.
- Alibaba Cloud provides low-cost and fast computing, networking, and storage resources. This significantly reduces costs when you build new systems or scale out.
- Rapid cloud migration for peripheral systems
- Reduced resource costs
- Improved customer satisfaction
- Comprehensive security protection
Architecture description:
- The internet insurance business system, electronic policy system, and electronic receipt system are deployed independently on Alibaba Finance Cloud. The core system remains in your on-premises data center.
- The electronic policy system uses Message Queue (MQ) for decoupling from the business system. The asynchronous generation of electronic policies does not affect the processing of the insurance business system.
- After the electronic policy system generates the original electronic policy, it sends the policy to Cloud Hardware Security Module (HSM) for encryption and signing. The system then sends the policy to the electronic receipt system, where customers or agents can sign or confirm receipt of the electronic policy.
- The electronic policy system stores the original electronic policy in Object Storage Service (OSS). OSS provides low-cost, long-term storage for large volumes of electronic documents.
- When customers query, download, or verify a policy over the internet, OSS and Alibaba Cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN) handle queries and downloads to reduce application bandwidth usage. HSM handles authenticity verification.
- Alibaba Finance Cloud provides various security products to ensure system data security and customer privacy.
- Alibaba Finance Cloud provides services such as text messages and email. These services can be used for text message verification codes and email authentication. You can also collect customer behavioral data when you reach end customers through these channels.
Partners provide out-of-the-box solutions for fast implementation and deployment.
Core system cloud migration solution for new insurance companies
New insurance companies are often small but have complex needs. They typically operate with limited staff, manage numerous tasks with tight deadlines, and face rapid changes. Cloud computing helps them reduce IT investment, launch quickly, and conduct business over the internet. Alibaba Finance Cloud recommends that new insurance companies use the following architecture with Alibaba Finance Cloud products.
Business architecture
- New insurance companies can divide their business into four modules: customer service, content and administration, policy management, and finance and fund management.
- New insurance companies can deploy all business modules on Alibaba Finance Cloud. With proper network and deployment planning, you can achieve high security and high availability on the cloud platform:
- You can define the application system for internet-facing business and clarify the position and boundaries of internet applications within the application architecture.
- You can plan the application and deployment architecture for non-insurance business systems, such as Office Automation (OA), email, and asset management.
- The key systems for a new insurance company are its business and financial systems. Alibaba Finance Cloud offers multiple deployment reference cases.
- Reference architecture for startup systems
- Needs-based network and deployment solutions
- Defined scope for cloud computing usage
- Comprehensive security system planning
Technical architecture
- System-wide security mechanisms:
- Frontend security mechanisms, such as deployed Alibaba Cloud Security products, are used to protect the entire system in an internet environment.
- Internal security mechanisms are used to ensure isolation between systems. Mutual access is allowed only with proper authorization.
- You can perform O&M operations using products such as Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Bastionhost. All operations are recorded for auditing and inspection.
- Active-active intra-city and geo-disaster recovery design:
- Server Load Balancer (SLB) and multiple zones in Alibaba Finance Cloud are used to create an active-active intra-city architecture for high availability (HA).
- Products such as Domain Name System (DNS) and Data Transmission Service (DTS) are used to build a geo-disaster recovery environment across different Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs). This architecture enables rapid disaster recovery switching and ensures business continuity.
- Hybrid cloud connectivity: Various network solutions are used to connect with systems in on-premises data centers and other external systems over the internet.
- Big data analytics: Data integration solutions are used to transfer business data to a big data platform for data analytics and applications.
- Active-active intra-city and geo-disaster recovery
- Security protection and regional isolation
- Interconnection with various peripheral environments
- Structured planning for various system environments
Core system cloud migration solution for life insurance
To migrate core systems to the cloud, Alibaba Finance Cloud uses a microservices framework. This approach transforms the core system into a modern, distributed architecture based on containerization and microservices.
Business architecture
- The core business is subdivided into microservices based on a containerized architecture:
- The underlying business support layer is used to logically divide service centers. This provides unified support for various insurance business processes and scenarios.
- The core insurance business is further subdivided into the following modules: business support, control layer services, entity data management, and support components. The business support module connects the core business with other business areas.
- The entity, control, and peripheral service centers have distinct responsibilities. They evolve independently with high cohesion and loose coupling.
- Horizontal teams provide specialized support for business processes and scenarios. Vertical teams provide professional support for specific business domains.
- Aligning IT service centers with business department divisions makes requirements and release impacts more manageable.
The Alibaba Finance Cloud expert team can help you build a comprehensive insurance business middle platform. This platform helps you quickly consolidate your company's IT service assets.
- Reference architecture for insurance core systems
- Reference for setting up various service centers
- Reuse of IT service assets across different business lines
- Unified infrastructure support
Technical architecture
- Application systems are built using a distributed architecture:
- Container technology and the cloud platform are used to provide a highly available, scalable, and elastic infrastructure for the application architecture.
- Alibaba Finance Cloud middleware products, such as Enterprise Distributed Application Service (EDAS), Distributed Relational Database Service (DRDS), and MQ, help decompose the core business into smaller microservice units.
- Alibaba Finance Cloud middleware products, such as Global Transaction Service (TXC), ensure transactional consistency in a distributed architecture.
- Application Real-Time Monitoring Service (ARMS), a middleware product, provides monitoring and management features.
- System-wide security: Various security products are used to fully protect internet-facing systems that use a microservices model.
- Improved efficiency: Alibaba Cloud DevOps is a one-stop R&D efficiency platform for enterprises. It uses project management flows and automated tools to enable 24-hour continuous integration and continuous delivery.
- DevOps based on container technology
- Ready-to-use microservices framework
- Distributed technical architecture
- Elastic infrastructure