SOLIDARIT Y SAUDI TAK AFUL COMPANY
DIGITAL REPORT 2020
Embracing change at scale in insurance IN ASSOCIATION WITH
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Solidarity: embracing change at scale in insurance WRITTEN BY
SEAN GALEA-PACE
PRODUCED BY
JORDAN HUBBARD
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S O L I D A R I T Y S A U D I TA K A F U L C O M PA N Y
Raid Bakri, CIO of Solidarity, discusses his company’s digital transformation journey and the significant culture shift embraced by the organisation
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ased in Saudi Arabia, Solidarity Saudi Takaful Company offers a range of the highest quality insurance products in
the Kingdom. Overseeing the company’s digital transformation is Raid Bakri, CIO of Solidarity. Having worked for sev04
eral large organisations such as Al-Rajhi Takaful and AXA Cooperative Insurance prior to joining Solidarity in 2018, Bakri has a comprehensive understanding of the insurance landscape and what is required to succeed in the digital world. “When I joined it was very important to hit the ground running,” he says. “The Solidarity CEO explained to me what he wanted to achieve for the company in its digital transformation, in addition to the services they wanted to launch. I built a straightforward agile strategy and outlined what we were going to deliver and committed that we’d do our best to deliver it within a year. And I’m very pleased to say we have achieved a 513% growth over the last 12 months in the services that were digitised.” Such growth has come to fruition due to Bakri and his team’s determination. In the past, Bakri believes that Solidarity wasn’t regarded as a major force
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S O L I D A R I T Y S A U D I TA K A F U L C O M PA N Y
“ Optane will help us with configuring faster calculation engines, web applications, data access and anything that requires advanced caching facilities” — Raid Bakri, CIO, Solidarity
cloud, Bakri says his company has no immediate plans to move all of its services over. “One of the key things we had to do was evaluate our infrastructure
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in the local Saudi Insurance industry.
and really determine what we have and
“Previously, no one really considered
how to optimise our capacity,” he says.
Solidarity as one of the key players in the
“There is a lot of talk around the cloud,
market,” explains Bakri. “However now,
and of course the cloud is important, but
I believe the outlook has changed, mainly
there are regulations that don’t allow us
because our competitors have taken
to transition there easily. I don’t really see
notice of the decrease in their online
much cost optimisation in moving every-
market shares in specific segments,
thing to the cloud because it’s still a niche
this is due to the online services and
set up in Saudi Arabia. The cost would
platforms we have launched. In some
end up costing organisations more as
segments, we’ve been able to capture
opposed to hosting your own infrastruc-
a 30-40% market share online in less
ture on-premise. And it was decided to
than a year.” Despite the rise of the
bring the cloud on-premise” Instead, Bakri believes in partnerships and has the drive to look closer to home and upgrade current processes. “I partnered with several local vendors that I have good experience with and we launched a project to upgrade our current infrastructure. We went with hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI)
private cloud architected by Solidarity
has allowed us to do 329,000 IOPS per
and HPE. HPE and Intel were testing a
second across four virtual servers. The
technology called Optane.” Optane is a
Optane setup has made this capacity
memory module created to accelerate
possible,” says Bakri. “Optane will help
data access speeds. It provides a better
us with configuring faster calculation
computing experience for the front-end
engines, web applications, data access
services allowing the applications to
and anything that requires advanced
fetch the data faster, from calculation
caching facilities, this will allow us to
engines to web applications, this tech-
serve our customers through web plat-
nology can be used anywhere in the
forms faster than the competition. That’s
organisation’s systems architecture.
what sets us apart.”
The technology uses 3D XPoint, a new
Bakri recognises the importance of
type of memory technology that its
change management and believes it is
manufacturers, Micron and Intel, claim
one of the most challenging aspects of
is 1,000 times faster than traditional
any transformation programme. “It’s
NAND flash. “Our front-end setup
one of the hardest things that we’ve
“Private Cloud” enabled with the tech
done,” admits Bakri. “It’s all about w w w.so l i da ri t y t a ka f u l. com
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“ Ultimately, the best idea always wins” — Raid Bakri, CIO, Solidarity
believes a culture shift was essential or his company would run the risk of stagnating its growth. “Internally, we had to change the mindset and become more visionary. Ultimately, the best idea always wins. It’s important that everyone has his/ her say,” he says. “I started to operate in
collaboration and understanding rather
Solidarity with a startup mindset. I told
than any individual’s effort. When I first
my team to forget about the past and
came on board, there was initially some
focus on the future. I believe a key reason
resistance in trying new ways of doing
why we’ve been able to achieve so much
things. However, I felt it was important
in such a short space of time is because
and I explained that change was neces-
of that startup mentality we encouraged.
sary in order to reach our goals.” Bakri
2019 was the turning point for Solidarity
Raid Bakri
E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE
An information technology expert and visionary with strategic expertise in implementing complex IT Digital Transformation projects, and 19 years of experience in the IT field, including 9+ years within the insurance industry. He is acknowledged for having an integrated set of competencies in the IT field ranging from managing DevOps and executing large Digital transformation programmes and leading large diverse teams from both the business and IT by breaking down the department silos ensuring agile collaboration to get job done. Bakri possesses a proven record of accomplishments in delivering innovative fluid solutions in a strategic agile manner, focusing on customer centricity, people centricity, efficiency and technology revolution & evolution. He is known for contributing to the bottom-line in all business areas to ensure value-added functions, facilities and quick to market deployments, are delivered all while improving operational excellence, increasing departmental productivity and optimising costs. w w w.so l i da ri t y t a ka f u l. com
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S O L I D A R I T Y S A U D I TA K A F U L C O M PA N Y
Takaful. If that digital culture shift hadn’t happened last year, we wouldn’t be in the position we’re in now and it would be a very different story.” Saudi Arabia itself is in the midst of a significant transformation in its history. The Saudi Vision 2030 is the Kingdom’s ambition and plan to reduce its dependency on oil, by diversifying its economy and developing its public and private sectors such as health, education, infrastructure, recreation, technology, aerospace, tourism and many other sec10
tors. With the Saudi Vision mindset by his HRH Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Bakri believes that customercentricity and easy to use services are at the heart of this transformation and Solidarity’s strategy is aligned with it
“ It’s all about collaboration and understanding rather than any individual’s effort” — Raid Bakri, CIO, Solidarity M AY 2 0 2 0
moving forward. “To me, the Saudi Vision is all about providing the best-in-class service for all segments exceeding worldwide standards and becoming a leader in setting the standard on how to service our nationals, visitors and guests. We want everyone to live and render services comfortably,” explains Bakri. “You don’t need to walk into a branch or be bound to a specific location to
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purchase your insurance policy or render
anything were to happen to your assets
a service anymore, I call this practice
that are insured with us, we will return
the traditional way. We should enable
it to its former state, with as little effort
our customers to purchase and render
required from the comfort of your home
service from anywhere and any time. It’s
or wherever you may be by enabling digi-
very important to be a service-driven
tal channels and services.�
organisation rather than a profit-driven one. If we focus on the services, the profit will follow. At the end of the day, we are selling people a promise that if w w w.so l i da ri t y t a ka f u l. com
www.solidaritytakaful.com
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