In 2019, Dutch insurance group NN moved its internal model and its risk platform into the cloud. One key element was taking NN's Solvency II calculation engine live on Microsoft Azure. In the same year, NN launched a new reporting platform as a cloud application on Amazon Web Services.

This year the company also started to move its remaining calculation engines to Microsoft Azure.

The Dutch insurer says moving its platforms live on the cloud brings speed, cost savings and the opportunity to extend the use of its risk platform to the business. Moreover, internal teams are fully in control of calculations and reporting.

The judges were impressed by the successful and efficient delivery of a large project, especially considering how internal models are highly complex.

Jorg Sauren, head of risk systems, group enterprise risk management NN Group, praises the company's diverse team of talent who worked closely together to build the calculation engines in-house, which was "why we were able to do it so quickly".

NN overcame many challenges in the process, including obtaining approval from the regulator and getting familiar with the possibilities for transformation that are presented by cloud technology.

He says: "It's a learning curve we have to go through. More and more internal models are being used for business purposes. For us, we need to scale that. Being on the cloud enables scaling."

NN plans to move its economic scenario generation platforms to the cloud in the next 12 months and embed all the elements from the Solvency II review, a process Sauren describes as an ongoing business for the firm.

The insurer has other ambitious projects. Over the next two years, NN plans to link its risk systems to the platform that has been developed for IFRS accounting standards – also a cloud-based platform, called Alfred – for reporting.