Sapiens uses Azure Kubernetes Service and Azure-managed DBs to get AI-ready and streamline developer efforts

With a focus on helping insurance providers embrace digital transformation with speed and agility, Sapiens International is a leader in the insurtech sector, serving customers in more than 30 countries worldwide. Sapiens’ cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) platform helps insurers modernize and streamline operations so they can support their customers with experiences that are seamless, efficient, and more secure.

“Our customers support businesses and families in their most vulnerable moments," says Alex Zukerman, Chief Strategy Officer at Sapiens. "It's our mission to ensure insurance providers are equipped with the most secure and efficient technology to provide the rapid response and care people need during challenging times.”

Beyond providing critical day-to-day support to providers, Sapiens’ solutions are also designed to help them drive growth with cost-effective, cutting-edge solutions that streamline operations, reduce costs, and enhance security and compliance. “We are continuously innovating to deliver digital transformation solutions for our customers that automate repetitive tasks and give them access to the data they need, when they need it,” says Gil Maletski, Chief Technology Officer for the General Insurance Division at Sapiens.

Sapiens applies the same approach to its own operations, fostering a culture of digital acceleration to ensure that it can meet the evolving needs and rising expectations of customers. "We're as committed to our own evolution as we are to helping our customers modernize. Equipping ourselves for innovation and resilience means our customers can rely on us for solutions they can easily customize, and for continuity—even amidst global and industry changes,” says Ilan Buganim, Chief Technology and Information Officer at Sapiens.

With this in mind, Sapiens aimed to enhance developer creativity and accelerate the development of transformative insurance solutions. “We think about our customers and their customers at the same time,” says Zukerman. “People expect their insurance providers to alleviate anxiety while filing a claim, not add to it. Providers need the most advanced tools, and we strive to be at the forefront of creating and supplying exceptional solutions to ensure a better experience for everyone.”

Being AI-ready

"Being AI-ready was the driver for our earlier migration to Azure. We made a pivotal shift toward modernizing our infrastructure and improving operational efficiencies to support AI innovation," says Michael Mirel, Director, Cloud Center of Excellence at Sapiens. Mirel underscores that this was a transformation of the entire Sapiens’ platform serving Sapiens’ customers. “We operate across life insurance, Property & Casualty insurance, and workers' compensation, which means we cover the majority of the insurance industry.”

Sapiens had existing systems that were technically aligned with Azure—and also had great trust in its high-performance computing, robust data security, and regulatory compliance capabilities. With support from Microsoft, Sapiens easily facilitated a seamless migration of critical workloads to Azure, enabling developers to focus on innovating using one technology—and one cloud.

To take advantage of cloud capabilities, Sapiens undertook the process of modernizing its app and data technologies by moving them to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), using Azure-managed databases—including Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure SQL, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, and Azure Cosmos DB—to enhance its data management and analytics capabilities. Zukerman says that AKS provided much more flexibility and elasticity for Sapiens.

“Microservice architecture with AKS enables us to seamlessly execute frequent releases for individual services. The platform is highly adaptable, making changes and scaling operations easy to automate,” says Zukerman. “Its user-friendly interface facilitates easy automation of tasks. Overall, AKS has proven to be a reliable, agile, and scalable solution for our needs.”

With Azure Cosmos DB and DB for PostgreSQL, the team had the support it needed to build highly scalable relational apps that could help its customers operate more efficiently and better serve their own customers. “Working with Microsoft, we tapped into the vast capabilities of the Azure integrated stack—high availability, low latency, stability, and of course scalability,” says Zukerman. In addition, the team chose Azure OpenAI Service to speed developer production of generative AI solutions that empower insurers across the entire value chain.

This put Sapiens on track to develop two sets of use cases: one for internal developers and another for outside users of the system, Sapiens’ customers and their customers. One use case was created to read and analyze claims document to assist claim handlers in quickly analyzing multiple large documents, and the second use case empowered users to configure the system based on natural language text document, in addition to using configuration GUI tools or JSON files.

“Claims often have thousands of documents, and there are a lot of privacy requirements, business sensitivities, compliance and security aspects, like the General Data Protection Requirements (GDPR) that must consistently be accounted for,” says Maletski. “Automating this with AI and employing natural language models sets a foundation for continuous innovation and the ability to create other processes and solutions that help our customers.”

Zukerman agrees, “With Azure OpenAI, we’re developing and supporting automated solutions that improve the accuracy and speed of processes like underwriting, claims processing, fraud detection, as well as creating chatbots for supreme customer service.”

Upleveling an industry

Buganim adds that Sapiens’ developers greatly appreciate how easy Azure OpenAI Service has been to work with, and that as they have advanced in innovation, they’ve simultaneously reduced development times contributing to an overall reduction in development costs. “We know our innovations are helping insurance providers manage tasks more effectively, ensuring customers' queries and claims are handled promptly and accurately,” says Buganim. “In addition, we can pass along to our customers the cost savings from reduced developer time. It’s a win-win.”

The automation of previously repetitive processes—and being able to retrieve critical information from complex documents such as policies, terms, and conditions using natural language AI models—saves insurers time and improves accuracy and process efficiency. Using Sapiens’ insurance industry tailored solutions to create their own virtual agents gives providers’ internal teams and live agents more time to personally address more complicated customer issues.

"Generative AI solutions are enabling our providers to report faster, make more accurate business decisions, and deliver greater value to customers. This is important to us because, ultimately, our goal is to support people when they need us the most,” says Zukerman.

Moving forward, Sapiens aims to bring more generative AI solutions to insurers and their customers globally and has a vision of revolutionizing how insurance providers operate. Says Maletski: ”The shift to generative AI is changing how we operate within Sapiens and enhancing the ways we can support customers. We believe it will uplevel the entire insurance industry.”

Find out more about Sapiens on X and LinkedIn.