The UK insurer’s long investment in cloud technology and artificial intelligence is now changing how employees work and customers are served.
When John Davison talks about insurance technology in 2008, he does not sound nostalgic.
“It was rubbish,” says the Chief Information Officer at 1st Central. “The systems that you bought were clunky. Some of them were still green-screen. They didn’t integrate very well. They didn’t handle large data sets very well.”
That weakness was precisely why 1st Central was founded. Price comparison websites were expanding rapidly and generating vast amounts of customer data, yet many insurers lacked the tools to use it effectively. The founders saw an opportunity to build a data-first insurer.
Founded in 2008, 1st Central has since grown to around 1.4 million customers, predominantly in motor insurance. Its leaders believe the technology foundations built over those 18 years now put it in a strong position for the next AI-driven wave of change.
Data-driven
The original vision was to understand risk more precisely by analysing detailed data quickly.
“The business that would win,” says Davison, “would concentrate on very, very fine-grained data, the ability to analyse that data in real time, and the ability to use the results of that analysis to improve customer journeys.”
1st Central has steadily replaced conventional insurance systems with technology it owns and controls. It has invested in digital services, self-service capabilities, and data platforms that allow it to respond quickly when customer needs or market conditions change.
“We are in a position as a business where we could design, build, and launch new digital products, including a fundamental new digital brand as well, within a three-month window,” says David Judic, Proposition Director at 1st Central.
“This pace buys us time that others can’t match.”
Cloud-first
A major milestone was moving both the company’s data platform and its core insurance systems to Microsoft Azure. 1st Central now runs the systems that handle policies, claims, and customer interactions in the cloud, rather than using it simply to store information.
For customers, the change is largely invisible. Behind the scenes, it gives the insurer access to the computing power required to work with increasingly large data sets.
“Data sets are getting bigger while customer expectations are becoming more ambitious,” says Davison. “You can’t do that with traditional platforms and data warehouses.”
Every day, 1st Central processes around 600,000 insurance quotes. For each one, it analyses approximately 5,500 data attributes and responds in around two-and-a-half seconds. Some of that analysis identifies potential inaccuracies in customer information before a policy is purchased.
“There is some very, very sophisticated real-time modelling,” Davison says. “It could not be achieved without running those models in cloud-based computing.”
AI at work
That cloud infrastructure laid the foundation for the company’s use of artificial intelligence. 1st Central now uses Microsoft 365 Copilot, an AI assistant built into familiar workplace applications, and Microsoft 365 E7, which brings together AI productivity tools with capabilities for managing identity, security, and AI agents.
Employees use Copilot to find information, summarise documents, connect material held in different parts of the organisation, accelerate research, test ideas, prepare presentations, and improve communications. The aim is not simply to finish tasks faster, but to help people get past the blank page and begin with a stronger first draft.
One internally developed AI assistant helps employees create content in 1st Central’s preferred tone of voice. The company estimates it saves around 6,500 hours of work each year.
But 1st Central wanted to ensure that governance kept pace with agentic innovation, so it developed a robust oversight framework to monitor agents without stifling the pace of innovation.
Human judgement
The next opportunity is to apply AI to the repeatable, rules-based processes common across insurance. An AI agent can take action towards a defined goal, rather than only producing an answer or a draft.
“All of our policy processes are rules-based. All of our claims processes are rules-based,” says Davison. “Customer interactions are predetermined and therefore are perfect for agentic AI.”
But Davison does not expect people to disappear from customer service.
“There will always be a combination of the two,” he says. “The AI is now going to take the lead and the humans are going to be overseeing, supervising, and ultimately becoming massively enhanced customer service people.”
That distinction comes into play when a customer faces a complex or sensitive situation. 1st Central is designing services that can recognise when human support is needed and transfer the conversation to an adviser.
Better service
For customers, the value will be measured less by the technology than by the experience. Changing a policy or resolving an issue can mean navigating self-service journeys, waiting on hold, or using web chat.
1st Central believes AI could make straightforward transactions faster and available at any time, while leaving people free to handle cases where empathy and judgement matter.
“It’s 24/7,” Davison says. “The customer proposition is actually higher quality in terms of the outcomes being better, more consistent, always on, always available, and meeting the customer’s need when they ask.”
Looking to the future, AI’s ability to understand customer data could also help make insurance a more personal and tailored experience, Davison believes. But that will require careful oversight, the ability to escalate any issues to a human at all times, and continual learning about how customers use the service, he says.
For a company founded on the belief that better use of cloud-based data and applications could transform insurance, AI is simply the next phase – the catalyst that will accelerate the transformation of insurance into a faster, simpler, more personalised service fit for the future.