First Insurance Chatbot To Market
Founded in the 1950’s, our client is a well-known and respected financial services company in South Africa, offering a comprehensive range of long-term investment and insurance solutions, including life insurance, annuities, retirement planning, and wealth management.
In 2016, the insurer embarked on a large-scale, organisation-wide digital transformation project. The aim was not only to modernise legacy systems but to shift the entire corporate culture from a risk-averse long-term insurer toward an agile, innovative competitor capable of disrupting the market and going head-to-head with fintech startups.
To lead this digital transformation journey, the client appointed a global management consultancy. As the preferred digital implementation partner for the consultancy, Retro Rabbit played a critical role in establishing the client’s in-house digital innovation centre, the Digital Innovation Hub.
The Digital Innovation Hub
The primary objective of the DIH was to grow internal technical capacity to support existing business units and rapidly roll out new digital products. The centre was established using a proven Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model, with Retro Rabbit playing a critical role across all three phases:
Build
During this phase, the goal was to build a digital product that could be launched and tested in the market within four months. Retro Rabbit’s team of designers and developers worked closely with the consultancy to design and implement a digital onboarding solution for the client’s core life insurance product.
Operate
The success of the initial phase led to three more product teams being spun up within months. These cross-functional teams combined internal bank staff with external specialists from Retro Rabbit. Our focus was to train and empower the client's internal teams to operate the DIH independently, ensuring industry best practices were applied throughout the software development lifecycle.
Transfer
Another three product teams were established, and management of the DIH was successfully transferred to the client's internal staff. Having earned a reputation for delivering high-quality software on time, Retro Rabbit’s implementation teams were introduced to other business units, ultimately landing the prized Short-Term Insurance (STI) project.
The Short-Term Insurance Chatbot
The short-term insurance (STI) chatbot project was not only the client’s first venture into the short-term insurance market, but it was also South Africa’s first insurance platform capable of supporting the complete user journey via a chatbot.
The project involved building a full omni-channel experience - including a mobile app, web portal, social media channels, and the conversational chatbot interface - and integrating it all into core back-office systems. Because short-term insurance was a new territory for the client, integration was exceptionally challenging; most of the back-end systems required for the front-end interfaces were non-existent, incomplete, or broken.
Despite these hurdles, Retro Rabbit’s implementation specialists took the project from inception to production in just six months. The STI project was so successful that a major national banking group acquired the short-term insurance business unit shortly after launch.
Achieving a Single View of the Client
A key requirement for the STI project was reliable access to client and product master data. Because the client lacked a dedicated Master Data Management (MDM) solution, retrieving a single view of a customer required aggregating data from multiple siloed legacy back-end systems.
To solve this, Retro Rabbit built Deepvision, a rapid-access datastore. Deepvision provided a single view of the client by seamlessly aggregating data from more than 10 legacy systems through a unified user interface and an API layer. The solution was so fast and reliable that it was spun out as a standalone project, subsequently utilised by multiple other business units across the corporate group.
Challenges
A brief look into the biggest obstacles we encountered and how we overcame them:
Risk-Averse and Siloed Environment
The client was a highly risk-averse, bureaucratic company operating in rigid silos with complex stakeholder dynamics.
Little Standardisation
Significant growth through historical mergers and acquisitions left the client with minimal standardisation and almost no integration across their technology stack.
No Single Source of Truth
The lack of an MDM solution or formal data governance led to extensive data duplication and no unified view of master data.
Unforeseen Gaps in Systems
As this was the client's first short-term insurance offering, numerous gaps were identified across processes, systems, and personnel while working against an optimistic deadline.
Legacy Technology
The existing technology stack was outdated, and the organisation was not yet equipped to embrace cloud technologies.
Resistance to Change
A preference for legacy frameworks meant some internal development teams were hesitant to adopt new technologies or transition to an agile software development process.
Lack of an Integration Platform
The legacy architecture lacked an integration platform capable of supporting the real-time data flow required by an end-to-end, self-service product.
Results
10+ Agile Teams Cultivated
The DIH successfully incubated more than ten digital implementation teams, all building and supporting their own digital products.
Market-First Product & Acquisition
Retro Rabbit successfully built and launched the pioneering STI chatbot, which was highly valued and subsequently acquired by a major financial services group.
Scalable Data Infrastructure
Deepvision was spun out as its own core product, providing a single view of master data to numerous high-profile projects across the enterprise.
Cloud Migration
Successfully migrated a large portion of the insurer's digital channels and legacy systems into modern cloud infrastructure.
