An aggressive drive to digitalize the business has underpinned the insurer’s rapid revenue growth.

When HNB Assurance, an insurance company in Sri Lanka, switched on its new digital core system in February, the move marked more than just a technical upgrade. For CEO Lasitha Wimalaratne, it was the culmination of a years-long transformation that he believes could help double the size of the country’s insurance industry and position Sri Lanka as a regional service hub.

The launch, which followed a complex migration from a 15-year-old legacy platform, is the latest milestone in a digital overhaul that began as a survival strategy during the Covid pandemic and has since become central to HNB Assurance’s vision for the future.

“We went live in February this year with all our data,” Wimalaratne told a recent conference in Hong Kong. “It was a nightmare to migrate, but it’s the only way forward. If we don’t keep investing in digital, we’ll be overtaken.”

Migrating two decades’ worth of legacy data to the new core involved standardization issues, data quality problems, and resistance from staff and advisors accustomed to manual processes.

To manage risk, HNB Assurance rolled out the new platform in phases, starting with group life and credit life products, then moving to more complex offerings. The company also invested heavily in training, shifting staff to leaner, more agile ways of working. Communicating the strategy to staff throughout was important.

But the biggest reason the transformation worked was because Covid made it impossible to do otherwise.

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