Global Insurer Revamps IT Systems
Generali Global Corporate & Commercial (GC&C) is a specialized business unit of Generali Group, one of the world’s largest insurance and asset management companies. GC&C offers P&C insurance and service solutions to medium-large companies and brokers in more than 180 countries.
According to Global Head of Operations & IT Matthew Richardson, “Innovation is in our DNA, and Generali GC&C is accelerating its commitment to technological innovation and AI, investing in cutting-edge solutions that fuel excellence, efficiency and sustainable value in the 2025–2027 strategic plan.”
Transforming IT in a Global Insurance Enterprise
Over the last five to six years, Matthew and his colleagues in GC&C’s IT Operations team have steered the business through an ambitious modernisation and transformation programme. The business has moved away from traditional technology and large disconnected databases to a cloud-first, low-code/no-code model enhanced by AI solutions.
This change has enabled smarter, faster and more connected insurance services and created an IT ecosystem that is resilient, scalable and primed for further innovation. Matthew is no stranger to delivering this kind of IT change programme, having worked for the business for more than a decade.
His breadth of experience is an essential aspect of his approach to his latest role and to IT leadership more broadly. Matthew is responsible for driving the operational excellence and technology strategy across GC&C’s international businesses in 27 countries.
Focus on Continuous Improvement
Matthew is Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) certified, a globally recognised framework for providing best practices for IT service management. His first transformation project was implementing an ITIL-oriented service desk, centred around a no-ticket, no-problem mindset.
Matthew views communication and collaboration as essential to effective change management. He considers his role people-centric, and works with consensus across teams and countries. Matthew explains, “I work with consensus across teams and countries and we are very open and transparent – you have to spend time with the business to understand exactly what is necessary, because IT is such a complex area.”
Modernising IT and Leveraging AI
The team focused on integration, but this brought its own challenges, including the need for ongoing maintenance and the inability to scale effectively. To solve the challenge, they worked with Microsoft to develop a cloud-first solution using Power Apps.
They built an end-to-end solution, a big simplification piece that allows everyone 24/7 uptime. The underwriter only needs to go into one system, rather than seven or eight different solutions depending on the line of business.
Resilience and Collaboration
Programmes of this scale bring challenges, and resilience and risk are important throughout. Matthew explains that adoption of a cloud-first model helps remove some of the complexity associated with maintaining and managing data.
Close collaboration with key technology partners, such as Microsoft Azure, has also proved important. Matthew explains that relationships must be rooted in a strong, strategic partnership model based on clear communication, shared ambitions and a goal of adding value to the overall outcome.
GC&C will not stand still when it comes to innovation. Matthew reports that the IT team is now in the midst of a large-scale transformational programme, which is all about ensuring that only high-quality data enters the company’s systems.
Matthew’s plan over the next period is to focus on adoption, training and awareness, it’s all about change management. The next level is getting people to see the value in the solutions, making them more intuitive and doing all they can to stop the business raising a ticket.
Matthew and his team have made significant progress in transforming GC&C’s IT ecosystem.
They will continue to drive innovation and improvement.
GC&C’s commitment to technological innovation and AI will fuel excellence, efficiency and sustainable value.
