In early May, Dan Reynolds, the editor in chief of Risk & Insurance, caught up with Ray August, President, DXC Insurance Software and Business Process Services. What follows is a transcript of that discussion, edited for length and clarity.

Risk & Insurance®: Thanks for meeting with us Ray. What do DXC Assure Smart Apps do, and how do they complement existing core systems?

Ray August (RA): The whole philosophy of Assure Smart Apps is designed to work alongside existing claims and underwriting core systems that they’re already embedded in.

We’ve created an architecture with a workflow and orchestration layer above the core platform. It integrates through APIs with the existing billing, policy, and claim systems, whether on premises or in the cloud.

This allows insurers to tackle high-friction processes — like claims intake or underwriting submission handling — without disrupting core business operations.

R&I: What does the training and learning curve look like when implementing these solutions for insurance operations?

RA: It’s actually really fast, and that was one of the design elements. We’ve designed these solutions so they plug into the existing infrastructure, and we’re talking a matter of months or even weeks.

One of the things I like to tell our team is what used to have to take years now has to take weeks. That’s been a complete design element of this approach.

One of the reasons you’re able to do that is at the core, you’re leveraging the data, the business rules, and the processes the insurance company already has. At the same time, we’re using Agentic AI technology to present the information, process it, and move at that speed. So we’re looking at just a few weeks for an implementation.

R&I: How is agentic AI being integrated into core insurance processes to meet the fundamental need for speed in responses and claims resolution?

Ray August, President, DXC Insurance Software and Business Process Services

RA: We look at it from several different angles and personas. The key one is serving the customer, which requires companies to provide accessibility to data and information in ways that enable them to better perform and pay claims.

You also have to look at the back end of the insurance company. Most large-scale insurance companies have a multitude of claims systems. Our smart app solutions, leveraging our Assure architecture platform, allow us to unify all those platforms together and provide a seamless claims experience.

This could be multiple property and casualty claims systems with different claims types, or it could span property and casualty and life. Around the world, we’re the largest provider of insurance systems to composite insurers — companies that write P&C, life, and potentially health insurance.

This is very common outside the U.S., though almost nonexistent within the U.S. However, many large writers like the farm bureaus write both life and P&C business and want to provide one claims experience to the end consumer. This allows them to deliver a unified experience across farm owners, personal lines, and life — all in one.

We’re enabling this unified experience in claims, billing, and customer information. In the past, this simply hasn’t been possible. Now, this allows us to unify that insurer’s experience in a way that’s never happened before.

Ultimately, the fundamental approach is analyzing the problem by engaging with our customers around the globe. We operate in 70 different countries with over a thousand customers that need to continue running and processing their business and continue to underwrite, pay claims, and bill.

R&I: You mentioned the uniformity of claims experience across different lines — that’s a key differentiator. How long have these applications been in the market?

RA: It’s an interesting journey. We are the largest consumer of AWS in the insurance industry — not just among software providers, but across the entire industry. We’ve been using AWS for our BPS operations, and about two years ago, we rolled out a system called the Assure platform, which moved mainframe server-based applications to the cloud on AWS. We now have over 150 customers taking advantage of that technology.

When we moved to the cloud, it became clear that insurance companies initially wanted to reduce costs. They wanted the benefits of the cloud and the consumption-based model. Then they realized they could do much more.

By exposing APIs to the cloud, we identified a significant challenge in our BPS: workflow automation. We put a workflow layer in place that we announced a year and a half ago. As soon as we launched that, people said it was much more than workflow — they needed actual applications to solve problems in claims, billing, and other areas.

Recognizing that need, we began rolling out our smart apps at the end of 2024 and made a big splash in March. In some ways, this technology has been percolating for several years, but the actual smart apps themselves are running in our BPS operation today. One of the benefits we have with our BPS is it enables us to eat our own cooking, as they say. Now we’ve made it available to our customers, and we’re just rolling it out to them now.

R&I: What feedback are you receiving from executives and customers using the app?

RA: The BPS customers who are using it are very excited. But I’m the biggest Smart App customer in the world because I’m using it in my BPS operations.

So, I’m delighted about what it does to improve the velocity, what it does to improve the business outcomes, and the speed to market to get them live. Our customers are seeing those same advantages.

It hasn’t been deployed at scale for our end customers yet, but they’re very excited about it. The response has been some of the most robust I’ve seen for any software in this industry in decades.

R&I: What is DXC’s approach to cybersecurity when delivering software solutions to insurance clients?

RA: Security is a foundation of our core platform, which is a SaaS-based foundation with embedded governance, data management, and compliance controls designed specifically for highly regulated insurance industries. We have made significant investments in cybersecurity professionals and have very established practices around our portfolio and integration layer. We control and monitor AI usage and compliance with global regulatory standards.

One thing you may not know about us is that we do all the processing, both policy and claims, for Lloyd’s of London. We have an entity called Velonetic, where we’re the majority partner along with Lloyd’s and the IUA. We’ve had a very long track record of running mission-critical insurance applications, and each year we process about a billion policies on our platform.

Cybersecurity is essential and fundamental. It’s not a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have, and it’s something we take very seriously.

To learn more, please visit https://dxc.com/platforms/assure/assure-smart-apps.

This article was produced by the R&I Brand Studio, a unit of the advertising department of Risk & Insurance, in collaboration with DXC Technology. The editorial staff of Risk & Insurance had no role in its preparation.