Protecting the UK insurance industry from risky bets

Fast and thorough database technology helps IIL handle over 100 million transactions a day.

LexisNexis
Industry Insurance
Technologies MySQL
Datacenters Multiple
Products ClusterControl

Background

IIL is a UK-based data and technology company. IIL specializes in providing pricing, fraud, and compliance technology for insurance and credit providers.

Insurance providers rely on IIL to authenticate customer details by aggregating private, public, and industry data throughout the whole insurance lifecycle from quote generation to claims management. This means IIL processes over 100 million transactions every day in real-time. It is therefore imperative the supporting databases can handle the volume, variety, and velocity of data transactions.

Challenge

To accommodate new customers and meet growth projections, IIL realized its existing service platform needed more capacity without sacrificing performance. To meet the goal of having enough capacity for the next three years, database operations were made more complex with the addition of clustering, load-balancing, and high availability. IIL required an effective way to manage and monitor the clusters, as the previous approach was too
manual and took away hours of valuable time a day from the IT team which could be spent on other projects.

Solution

After being recommended and trialed by the IT team at IIL, Severalnines’ ClusterControl platform was deployed within weeks to resolve the database challenges. ClusterControl now automates the management and monitoring of a number of clustered MySQL systems, which in total handle over 40 Terabytes of data. IIL can meet market expansion without compromising on database reliability and resilience.

ClusterControl gives us detailed insight into our database clusters in an intuitive format. Now we can see what is really going on under the hood quickly without a lot of time to go through the logs.

Andy McCulloch, IT Manager for ILL

Outcome

Andy McCulloch, IT Manager at IIL, said: “The majority of our customers need to deliver online insurance quotes in real-time and this requires IIL to be as fast in providing customer checks. ClusterControl gives us detailed insight into our database clusters in an intuitive format. Now we can see what is really going on under the hood quickly without a lot of time to go through the logs. Automating database management saves us time in writing new
code for checks and maintenance tools. If we need further optimization in the future, we want to work with Severalnines again.”

Vinay Joosery, Severalnines Founder and CEO said: “There are two forces which are threatening to pull the insurance industry apart. At one end, billions of pounds are lost every year due to fraud and non-compliance, whilst at the other end comparison websites are making it easier for customers to compare and buy policies in real-time and this reduces brand loyalty. IIL has a very important job in future-proofing the insurance industry by sharing reliable information and identifying risks such as fraud. Severalnines is glad to support IIL in a fast-moving insurance sector.”


Summary

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Full lifecycle database ops through a single pane of glass

ClusterControl offered centralized database management with monitoring and automation features to allow ILL to better support their clients.

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Centralized monitoring and insights

ClusterControl gives ILL detailed insights into database clusters in an intuitive format, with clear visibility under the hood to monitor performance.

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Meet growth projections at scale

To accommodate new customers and meet growth projections, ILL needed more capacity without sacrificing performance. ClusterControl made managing their complex clustering simple.

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