American Family Insurance and AWS Team Up to Drive Innovation in the Insurance Industry
At AWS re:Invent, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), today announced an expanded relationship with American Family Insurance, a mutual insurance company focused on property, casualty, business, and life coverage. As part of the multiyear agreement, American Family Insurance has selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider to help accelerate cloud migration, drive innovation, provide financial support and training for the local community, and reduce environmental impact.
In addition, American Family Insurance and AWS have teamed up to establish a co-innovation fund as part of the companies’ shared commitment to create new solutions that will benefit consumers and the insurance industry. The fund will allow cross-functional teams to work backwards—using cloud technologies, developing new processes, and combining expertise from both companies—to solve specific business and insurance industry challenges. The fund aims to identify, test, and develop novel ways to support consumer insurance needs that couldbe broadly adopted across the entire insurance industry.
“With AWS, we’re embarking on a mission to accelerate digital innovation in every part of our business,” said Peter Settel, American Family Insurance’s chief strategy and technology officer. “The American Family Group of companies are customer-driven and powered by purpose—we champion dreams and opportunities so everyone can rise. Working with AWS, we are building on our 95-year history to deploy the technology foundation necessary to serve our customers and our communities for the decades ahead.”
American Family Insurance’s expanded partnership with AWS will accelerate the insurance company’s cloud migration. This multiyear migration will enable American Family Insurance to centralize its information technology infrastructure and reduce operating costs, enhance business performance, and expand support for the company’s 13.1 million policyholders. Once the migration is complete, American Family will leverage AWS analytics, compute, databases, machine learning, security, and storage capabilities to drive efficiencies, increase responsiveness, and become a more agile company in the cloud.
“Migrating our legacy systems to the cloud enables us to deliver new digital processes that reduce response times, help boost innovation, and decrease operating costs, while still providing the personalized service and security that our customers expect,” said Sheldon Cuffie, American Family Insurance’s chief information security officer.
“AWS will help American Family Insurance meet the industry’s most stringent security and compliance requirements, gain a holistic view of customer preferences, and innovate ways to help protect what matters most,” said Matt Garman, senior vice president of Sales, Marketing, and Global Services at AWS. “AWS’s scale, performance, and portfolio of capabilities give American Family Insurance the flexibility to focus on innovation, delivering new products and customer touchpoints that reflect its commitment to exceptional service.”
Supporting Local Communities and the Environment
American Family Insurance is committed to investing in the communities it serves. Providing access to technical training is a critical step in helping underemployed individuals embark on a new career in IT. Starting in 2023, American Family Insurance and AWS will provide free cloud training together with Brooksource, an AWS Technology Consulting and training partner, and Milwaukee Tech Hub Coalition, a non-profit organization working inclusively to grow technology talent in the region. This fully funded program will use AWS re/Start, a cohort-led workforce development training program with the support of Brooksource’s Elevate Program. The program will help prepare underemployed individuals for careers in cloud computing and will be offered to them at no cost. Once the training is complete, Brooksource will help graduates secure IT roles with companies in the region, including American Family Insurance.
American Family Insurance believes addressing climate impact and supporting climate resilience is critical to communities and customers. In September, American Family Insurance became the first U.S.-based insurance company to sign The Climate Pledge, joining more than 375 companies across 53 industries in 34 countries committed to become net-zero carbon. By migrating to AWS, American Family Insurance will decrease its workload carbon footprint as part of its goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030.
About Amazon Web Services
For over 15 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 96 Availability Zones within 30 geographic regions, with announced plans for 15 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and Thailand. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.
About the American Family Insurance group
Based in Madison, Wisconsin, American Family Insurance has been serving customers since 1927. We inspire, protect and restore dreams through our insurance products, exceptional service from our agency owners and employees, community investment and creative partnerships to address societal challenges. We act on our belief in diversity and inclusion by constantly evolving to meet customer needs and preferences. American Family Insurance group is the nation’s 13th-largest property/casualty insurance group, ranking No. 251 on the Fortune 500 list. The group sells American Family-brand products, primarily through exclusive agency owners in 19 states. The American Family Insurance group also includes CONNECT, powered by American Family Insurance, The General, Homesite and Main Street America Insurance. Across these companies the group has more than 13,500 employees nationwide.
About MKE Tech Hub Coalition
The MKE Tech Hub Coalition is a non-profit organization working to inclusively double tech talent in the Milwaukee region. We serve as a connector for Milwaukee’s tech community, working with others to grow a vibrant, inclusive ecosystem where tech and innovation create enduring regional prosperity and life-changing jobs. Formed in late 2019, over 125 member organizations collaborate to attract individuals and businesses to the region, grow a diverse talent pipeline, and scale the innovation ecosystem. Underlying all initiatives is an intentional focus on increasing the diversity of our tech talent. To learn more, visit www.mketech.org.
About Brooksource
Brooksource is a professional services and workforce development organization, providing IT and Engineering solutions across various technology ecosystems and products. We employ a national network of consultants, local and national delivery engines, and strategic partnerships with industry-leading technology solution providers to support our customers’ high impact initiatives. As a complement to our core professional service offerings, Brooksource’s workforce development program, Elevate, focuses on providing customized learning pathways and full-time consulting opportunities to individuals from diverse and underserved populations. Elevate’s success over the last 20 years has been predicated on the program’s ability to upskill talent in niche technical domains and assist enterprise organizations looking to build more sustainable workforces for the future.
