Case Study: Willis Towers Watson achieves up to 40% cost savings and scalable UBI analytics with Microsoft Azure

Insurance Tech Provider Delivers Disruptive Solutions, Projects Saving 40 Percent with Cloud

Willis Towers Watson, a global provider of insurance technology and consulting, faced the challenge of enabling usage-based insurance (UBI) for insurers who lack the capital and scale to process massive, real-time telematics and third‑party data. The company needed a way to host and run highly granular analytics for millions of vehicles without overbuilding costly on‑premises infrastructure or exposing customers to unpredictable demand.

Willis Towers Watson built a hybrid cloud solution on Microsoft Azure (using Table Storage, Cloud Services and Azure Batch) combined with on‑premises SQL Server reporting and Agile development practices and Microsoft tooling. The approach delivered elastic compute for its UBI and Risk Agility FM offerings, cut initial capital costs by about 20% and projects 30–40% savings as volumes grow, dramatically sped up large models (for example, a six‑hour run reduced to two minutes on Azure Batch) and broadened market access by making UBI affordable for smaller insurers.

Towers Watson

Andy Lingard

Global Leader of General Insurance Software Dev.