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Empowering innovation at Mitsui Sumitomo

John Walker, Head of London Digital Hub at Mitsui Sumitomo

“I love the fact that we now have genuine institutional confidence in trying new things, helping us empower both colleagues and clients through innovation. Forget fear of failure - what I’m hearing is the buzz around just what is possible.”

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group (MSIG) is a leading global insurance provider and part of MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings, one of the world's largest insurance groups. With a strong presence across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, MSIG is known for its financial strength, commitment to customer service, and innovative approach to risk management, helping businesses and individuals navigate an evolving risk landscape.

The London Digital Hub (LDH), a key division of MSIG and a ‘crucible’ of innovation, operates at the nexus of insurance and technology, focusing on delivering advanced tools to empower underwriters and decision-makers.

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Built a platform for innovation

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Provided architecture & build skills

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Integrated ML & AI services

The Problem

The London Digital Hub (LDH) is driving innovation in the insurance sector with data-driven capabilities, such as California wildfire monitoring, exposure aggregations, and vessels tracking and risk-rating. To achieve this, LDH needed to build a platform for enabling rapid development and experimentation.

Despite their strong in-house expertise in data science and application development, there was one vital thing missing: the Azure infrastructure and architecture expertise required to engineer the best practice, cutting-edge platform.

“The partnership with Shaping Cloud represents more than a typical vendor relationship. It's a strategic alliance that addresses a fundamental challenge in technological innovation - building robust, secure infrastructure that doesn't rely on ‘smoke and mirrors’.”

The Solution

With internal stakeholders eager for results, they turned to Shaping Cloud, a trusted expert Microsoft Partner, to deliver a solution aligned with Microsoft’s best practice Cloud Adoption Framework.

The project centered on creating a Terraform-based Azure Landing Zone, fully automated via Azure DevOps pipelines. By adopting a PaaS-first approach and integrating ML and AI services, the platform ensured scalability, cost-effectiveness, and future readiness. Key challenges, including access restrictions and knowledge gaps, were resolved through innovative solutions like an Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) environment and comprehensive training.

“What Shaping Cloud allows us to do is create an absolute best-practice foundation”

The Outcome

The impact was substantial: Automated processes save 20–30 person-days annually, while proof-of-concept applications are already paving the way for future projects. The platform exceeded expectations, fostering stronger collaboration between LDH, MSIG’s central IT service, and Shaping Cloud, removing barriers and silos and creating more of a collaborative, can-do culture looking to push its boundaries.

Sustained value: Shaping Cloud’s continued involvement as a managed service provider ensures ongoing support in DevOps, architecture, and identity management – strengthening both partnership and performance for the long-term.

Beyond its technical achievements, the platform has sparked interest across MSIG for broader digital transformation initiatives. This project highlights how the right expertise and collaboration can empower organisations to overcome challenges and drive meaningful innovation in a competitive landscape.

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Automated processes

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20-30 days saved annually

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Sparked wider innovation

The Results

In it’s Azure platform, LDH now has the environment that aligns perfectly with it’s operational imperatives - enabling, secure, compliant, robust - the gateway to huge potential for both LDH and the wider Mitsui Sumitomo business.

Shaping Cloud drew on it’s deep domain experience and sector knowhow to derisk the process and deliver the platform to time. But more than that, it’s strategic grasp, calm assurance, and mastery of detail has given LDH real belief in the partnership and in its own capabilities: it is already innovating with confidence and agility.

The result is not just a solution for today but a launchpad for the future, setting a new standard for digital innovation in insurance.

“Alongside the operational tangibles we’ve also secured something priceless – a cultural shift that’s helping foster acceptance of the truth around innovation: you must be prepared to fail and be equipped to fail quickly and cheaply.

We already have other divisions running with ideas. While the LDH and Shaping Cloud teams were focused on derisking the journey and ensuring everything was pitch perfect on arrival, our colleagues have been able to simply enjoy the destination and literally step onto the platform.”