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

Risk & Insurance®: Thanks for meeting with us Ray. You’ve spent your career in insurance – what would you say has been your north star?

Ray August (RA): Throughout my career, my focus has been on getting close to customers and building products that deliver value. At DXC, we think about what customer problems we’re trying to solve, gather a community to discuss those problems, and deliver products that address them. DXC is the largest provider of insurance software and BPS services globally. We have over 1,000 customers with more than 3,000 installations across 70 different countries, and we serve 21 of the top 25 largest insurance companies worldwide. I’m particularly proud that approximately 10% of the world’s insurance premium is processed on a DXC system, meaning on average, one out of 10 people interact with our systems daily.

This scale gives us a unique vantage point to understand challenges and opportunities in the industry. We can create purpose-built applications that help insurance companies better serve their policyholders, modernize iteratively, and operate with confidence.

R&I: We’re in a period of very rapid industry change – much of it seems to be coming from AI. With that pace of change, what is DXC’s focus to help the insurance industry evolve?

RA: First and foremost, our focus is always on addressing what I call ‘capability debt’ in the insurance industry. This includes technical debt from systems built for purposes that no longer align with current needs. It also includes organizational debt, where existing personnel may not be equipped to take the company forward.

And when technical debt combines with organizational debt, you create process debt. These are processes that made sense when implemented but no longer serve the company’s future needs. Our new product strategy revolves around conquering these forms of capability debt and transforming them into opportunity for our customers. Let’s take our Assure Platform – we’ve recently launched several next-gen solutions, each of which are designed to address that debt. Take Assure BPM, which we’ve developed in collaboration with our partner ServiceNow – it’s a prime example of this approach. This solution tackles process debt by leveraging AI to automate and standardize workflows across different insurance systems throughout the entire policy lifecycle.

It enables insurance companies to reduce manual effort, improve cycle times, and enhance customer satisfaction. This is just one example of how we’re addressing capability debt, specifically process debt, and the market response has been overwhelming.

Ultimately, what each individual solution is designed to do is to meet insurers where they are, helping them accelerate their transformation journeys.

R&I: What logical or cultural errors occur in the decision-making process when insurance carriers conclude they need to replace their existing technology systems?

Ray August, President, Insurance Software & Business Process Services, DXC Technology

RA: At DXC, our approach begins with a deep respect for the systems insurers already rely on. These heritage platforms hold the data, business rules, and processes that are foundational to both our customers and the industry.

Our Protect, Extend, Transform strategy is really designed to help insurers modernize at their own pace, without compromising compliance or operational continuity.

We think about Protect like this – we safeguard the years of investments our customers have made in their existing heritage systems and leverage their embedded data, processes and rules. And with Extend it’s about where we modernize our customers by moving them to the cloud, exposing APIs, and enhancing user experience securely and quickly. Finally, Transform is that enhancement of operations through our SaaS, AI-powered Assure class solutions.

We can see this strategy in our Assure Platform, we help insurers protect their existing systems by running them securely in the cloud. We extend their capabilities with secure APIs, AI, and user experiences without requiring a rewrite of core code. And we enable true transformation by layering in digital-first capabilities like automation, analytics, and self-service.

And with AI, the opportunity to keep legacy systems while upgrading specific processes and technologies is growing exponentially.

R&I: What’s your take on agentic AI?

RA: Agentic AI is one of the biggest game changers I’ve seen in my career. It allows us to increase productivity and enhance our decision-making at scale in a way that’s never been done before. I believe that Agentic AI empowers knowledge workers to reach the right level of effectiveness. The efficiency gains we’re observing are astronomical.

And this isn’t something we started working on yesterday – we’ve been working on what would be the best technology solution for our customers for the better part of two years. We knew we needed to look deeply at who’s investing in agentic AI and who’s doing it at scale, which led us directly to our partner ServiceNow.

As we move into this agentic world, it’s about exposing systems in a safe, secure way to the right data, so it’s provided the information needed to make decisions and take action on those decisions.

Even with our own Assure BPM product, we’re seeing productivity dramatically increase, creating more and more efficiency. The use cases are real and materializing very quickly, unlike some of the old technologies where it took a long time to show results. Now we’re seeing remarkable gains very quickly.

R&I: It seems you are really developing products as a direct result of the conversations you’re having with customers on what they identify as the industry pain points – what’s next?

RA: My job is to meet customers where they are rather than being a vendor who dictates where they should go.

We want to be that game-changing technology partner for insurers who are looking to cut costs while boosting efficiency. One way we can do that is helping them to move infrastructure to the cloud which can reduce hardware costs, improve scalability, and lower IT maintenance expenses.

That’s our Extend strategy at work. We enhance capabilities in their heritage applications by moving them to the cloud to improve user – both workforce and customer – interface. DXC is now the largest AWS customer in insurance software. We run more AWS cycles than anybody else in the industry because we’ve moved so many clients to the cloud.

And moving to AI, another new product we’ve introduced recently Assure Risk Management – it’s an AI-powered solution designed to transform the employee claims journey for self-insured organizations by combining intelligent automation with human expertise. We have about 175 customers in the US and recently signed the largest retailer in Australia.

In the global specialty space, we will officially launch a multitenant SaaS solution designed for smaller brokers new product in October. DXC is the largest provider in the Lloyd’s and London market, where we handle over 50% of broker transactions. We’re the majority shareholder in a company that processes 100% of the policy billing and claims for Lloyd’s.

R&I: How does DXC Technology address the industry-wide challenge of recruiting and retaining talent needed for AI and technology initiatives?

RA: When it comes to AI talent specifically, I like to point out that current AI versions like ChatGPT only went mainstream about a year ago. To say we need more “AI people” is misleading – it’s really about building talent, not buying it. Even the most prolific AI professionals have only been doing this specific work for a couple of years, not decades.

The key is finding people with strong engineering backgrounds, data skills, and architectural knowledge, then helping them develop. We focus on providing both skills and tools to our people while ensuring they have fulfilling jobs where they make meaningful differences for clients.

We are proud to have a global workforce that deploys solutions in 70 different countries with global delivery centers in virtually every time zone. Today, we have over 14,000 people on the team delivering solutions to customers around the globe. Hiring, retaining, and growing these professionals is essential to our success.

R&I: What final thoughts about DXC Technology’s approach, products, or company vision would be important for our readers to understand?

RA: Organizations need a technology partner that is more than just a vendor that helps them adopt AI and other transformative technologies in a stabilized, low-risk manner. The insurance industry is at risk of experiencing disruptions from adopting unproven technologies more than any other I’ve seen. That’s why it’s crucial for us to meet our customers where they are. Our Protect, Extend, Transform strategy is fundamental to our approach.

Agentic AI is helping insurers respond to customer requests faster and more accurately, significantly reducing manual effort and accelerating resolution times and our Assure Cloud enables insurers to operate more efficiently, respond swiftly to market changes, and deliver the kind of digital-first experiences today’s policyholders expect.

And what makes us special and distinctive in the market is our employee base, customer base, number of products, and global presence across numerous countries.

To learn more, please visit https://dxc.com/us/en.

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.