Cloud computing standard for the insurance industry

On June 16, 2021, the Polish Insurance Association published the Cloud computing standard for the insurance industry. It is a set of rules for the preparation of an effective cloud implementation, taking into account all legal and supervisory requirements.

The study includes, among others:

• set of the requirements resulting from the content of the Polish Financial Supervisory Authority Cloud communication of 23 January 2020 regarding the processing of information by supervised entities in a public or hybrid computing cloud in relation to entities in the insurance sector,
• a number of sample documents needed when using cloud solutions, including an information classification template, a risk estimation template and many more.

The standard has been divided into chapters devoted to regulations affecting the implementation of cloud computing services in the insurance sector. In addition, recommendations and legal regulations were described along with relevant standardized actions that, in the opinion of the authors, should be taken to implement the cloud computing service in accordance with the given regulation.

This is another initiative after the Polish Cloud standard prepared by financial organizations and technology companies, aimed at accelerating the introduction of cloud services for the financial sector.

Certainly, the standards for introducing cloud services for investment companies and investment funds would also be a great help. In this regard, however, we should wait for the initiatives of the competent chambers of commerce.

As Getindata, a company engaged in cloud solutions and digital transformation, we see a great interest of entities from the financial sector, including insurance companies, in migrating to cloud computing. Currently, many Polish insurers already use cloud platforms and services for the creation of databases and data warehouses as well as big data analysis. Cloud computing is a great fit for digitization in insurance companies, which sped up significantly in 2020 due to the pandemic and lockdown. Insurers were able to react faster to the changing market situation and the needs of customers and stakeholders, while reducing the costs of IT infrastructure. Managing data analytics in the cloud from technology perspective is also a natural step forward as the evolution of Big Data analytics is pointing towards cloud native or managed services focused on delivering capabilities to business stakeholders instead of focusing on infrastructure and software.

Getindata supports companies in defining their strategy for becoming data-driven and analytics-driven organizations. We help to plan a road map for expanding analytics powered by on-premise or public cloud data infrastructures having clear business use cases in mind. Getindata has experience in road to cloud projects for both digital native startups and large regulated enterprises, in particular financial services companies.