Re-platforming for DUAL with zero downtime

High-volume, self-service legal indemnity comparison tool with quote and bind.

DUAL, part of Howden Group, is one of the world’s largest international MGAs.Founded in 1998, its vision to be the world’s best underwriting business has seen the company grow to $3.2 billion of GWP with over 70 different products in 21 countries.

Overview

DUAL Asset’s MLIS (My Legal Indemnity Shop) product is a high-volume, self-service, online comparison tool for solicitors in the UK to compare and buy legal indemnity insurance against a variety of risks.

Technical support for the incumbent technology was coming to an end, and DUAL Asset was looking for a new platform that could not only meet the performance demands necessary for the complexity and volume of submissions, but also streamline the middle and back-office processes, to make underwriting and administration quicker and easier.

The project also faced a tight deadline of less than 6 months in which to scope, build, test, and launch a robust replacement solution, before the old platform went offline and the product would have had to be withdrawn.

Solution

The project comprised of 2 main components: Replacing the existing price comparison broker portal, and feeding those submissions into a new dedicated back-end underwriter workbench. The underwriting workbench uses services from DUALforce, DUAL’s Salesforce-based core platform

By building on the Salesforce platform, Azur was able to reconcile what currently required two different platforms, down to just one.

The portal was built using Salesforce ‘Lightning Web Components’ on top of an ‘Experience Cloud’ community. This configuration delivered the very fast load times specified by the client, as well as seamless integration into the Salesforce ecosystem.

The back-end underwriter workbench was built using Salesforce ‘Financial Service Cloud’, whilst also leveraging the expression sets and rater functionality of Salesforce for Industries.

Azur Technology not only understood the complexity of the technical challenge that we faced, but also had a deep understanding of the insurance industry. This unique combination of expertise was crucial in the successful delivery of what was a very time-sensitive project for us.

Rebecca Ince

COO, DUAL UK and Europe

Outcome

An agile Azur team of just 5 engineers and 1 architect successfully scoped, built, and deployed both the replacement front-end portal, as well as an integrated back-end underwriter workbench – with direct data feeds into both finance software and Bordereau – in less than 6 months, with zero downtime or drop in submissions.

The portal, which supports white-labelling for 51 different brands, calculates and deliver quotes from 4 different carriers in a matter of seconds. Customers can then compare and purchase their preferred policy.

DUAL Asset stipulated that page loads times, including 4 separate ratings, had to be less than 3 seconds. Using Lightning Web Components, Azur technology was able to deliver an end-to-end experience with average page load times of just 1.8 seconds.

600+

Submissions per day. Re-platformed a live product with zero downtime or drop in performance.

20 sec

Furnishes quotes from 4 carriers for comparison in approx 20 seconds.

2 min

End-to-end quote and bind process of approx 2 mins.