Customers

Hongkang Life Insurance delivers infosecurity compliance and drive digital transformation

Nutanix Enterprise Cloud helps insurer embrace customer-centricity strategy by ensuring info-security, high availability of services during crisis, as well as full regulatory compliance.

INDUSTRY

Financial services

CHALLENGES

  • Compliance with new industry regulations on stricter demand in IT risk management and info security
  • Deliver high availability of datacenters during disasters, malfunctions and other risks.
  • Achieve high ROI in cost savings and resource efficiency

SOLUTION

  • Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform
    • Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS
    • AHV with built-in Security Configuration Management Automation
    • Prism
  • Applications
    • Core business system used for disaster recovery center
    • Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Finance System
    • Bank and Insurance Connecting Platform
    • Corporate Website
    • Communication Platform
    • Intermediate trading platform and business platform
    • Cloud-based sales platform
    • Risk control system
    • MySQL standby databases for some of the above applications replicated from production datacenter

BUSINESS BENEFITS

HongKang Life fully embraced its customer-centric strategy by ensuring infosecurity of its customers, and data and service availability in times of crisis. As such, the insurer achieved IT regulatory compliance as stipulated in China’s 13th Five-year plan (2016-2020).

In addition, HongKang Life’s data center can now scale efficiently to support growth in digital services such as its promise of a 3-minute online approval service to its customers, continuous innovation of their products and adoption of new technologies, for example, AI, blockchain, face recognition, online intelligent underwriting and more.

CHALLENGES

Business outgrows current IT capacity

Since its inception in 2012, Hongkang Life is known as “a true internet life insurer and has grown tremendously with its profit doubling year-on-year. Thanks to its no-agent, online service strategy and its belief in serving only products that meet customer’s needs, Hongkang life transaction volume has created substantial pressure to company’s datacenter.

A hyperconvergence solution was the perfect middle ground between the traditional architecture and a private cloud, balancing the cost-effectiveness and convenience. Nutanix AHV was the clear choice for our new disaster recovery data center.

Mr. Zhang, CIO, Hongkang Life

Tightening regulatory laws

The company was also required to comply regulations introduced in the 13th Five-year Plan (FYP) for 2016 to 2020. The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) required insurers to improve information security infrastructure, including risk database, disaster recovery data center, as well as set up information security safeguard systems, boosting their comprehensive information security protection ability, amongst many others.

As such, “the construction of a same-city disaster recovery center was high on our agenda and we needed it to justify and show immediate ROI for our day-to-day business,” said Mr. Zhang, CIO of Hongkang Life. “High availability, scalability, security and ease of management were some of the main deciding factors on our list.”

SOLUTION

After extensive comparisons and tests, Hongkang Life set sights on Nutanix Enterprise Cloud solution. The entire application layer of the data center is built using Nutanix products and solutions. “A hyperconvergence solution balances the cost-effectiveness and convenience. It was the clear choice for us,” said Zhang.

With Nutanix AHV solution, HongKang Life created a comprehensive system environment for business, finance, investment and regulatory reporting. All business operations and services have been configured to ensure maximum uptime in times of crisis, greatly enhancing business continuity and stability. The built-in Security Configuration Management Automation in AHV also helped the insurer to achieve compliance with complex regulatory guidelines in the country.

CUSTOMER OUTCOME

Rapid deployment in days

The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud solution greatly expedite construction for Hongkang Life’s same-city disaster recovery data center. Nutanix AHV solution comes pre-installed and ready to use. Once the clusters are set up and the power is turned on, it only takes a few minutes for the system to startup and begin running. According to Zhang, the deployment of all applications took only two days to complete, while it required at least two days to set up the system in the past.

Automated compliance to info-security standards

Nutanix Security Configuration Management Automation (SCMA) constantly assesses and maintains the security of Nutanix clusters to ensure that all regulatory requirements (e.g. PCI-DSS) are met. Over 1,700 security entities can be self-corrected across storage and hypervisor layers.

High availability and data recovery

“Whether data is accidentally deleted due to human error or if the infrastructure is partially lost due to disasters, Nutanix has got us covered,” Zhang said. With a few-clicks configuration, Nutanix provides HongKang with the necessary protection in times of crisis and allow the company to recover their digital service offerings and data in short periods of time.

Cost savings and increased workforce productivity

Zhang was pleased to see immediate ROI with over 30% cost savings pocketed for the business. This calculation does not even include workforce productivity saved with Nutanix. “The Prism management console delivered simplicity in operation, management and maintenance,” said Zhang.

NEXT STEPS

Zhang said, “From both business and technical perspective, adopting the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software solution has been a huge success.” Hongkang Life will continue its customer-centric strategy and stay focused on providing innovative services that meets the customer’s needs. As business grows, HongKang Life’s disaster recovery center plans to gradually increase the deployment of Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software solutions in the future.