AD -Agile Decision for Product development Qorus-NTT DATA Innovation in Insurance Awards 2026

Agile Decision – The AI-Powered Insurance Product Engine.

1. Concept and Objectives

Agile Decision is an intelligent, low-code decision hub designed to fundamentally transform how insurance products are created and brought to market. At its core, the platform empowers business teams—not just IT—to independently design, validate, and launch fully compliant insurance products through a visual, drag-and-drop interface powered by artificial intelligence.

Our primary objectives are clear:

(1). To shift insurance product development from a slow, technology-dependent process to a fast, business-led practice.

(2). To reduce the product development cycle from over a month to just days.

(3). To embed compliance and risk control directly into the design phase, ensuring "compliance by design."

(4). To break down departmental silos and create a single source of truth for collaboration

(5). To build a scalable, reusable library of product components that accelerates innovation and reduces redundant work.

(6). Ultimately, to drive sustainable business growth by enabling rapid response to market opportunities with higher-quality, customer-centric products.

2. Reasons Behind the Project

The initiative was born from pressing challenges within the traditional insurance landscape:

(1). Slow Time-to-Market:  Lengthy development cycles (often 30+ days) meant missed market windows and slow responses to emerging customer needs.

(2). Innovation Bottlenecks:  Business ideas were trapped in a "request-and-wait" cycle, heavily dependent on overburdened IT teams for implementation.

(3). High Compliance Risk and Cost:  Manual, late-stage compliance reviews were prone to oversight, leading to expensive rework and regulatory exposure.

(4). Organizational Silos: Disconnected workflows between marketing, actuarial, compliance, and operations caused misalignment, version chaos, and communication overhead.

(5). Rising Market Expectations: The demand for personalized, digital-first insurance experiences required a fundamentally more agile and data-driven development model.

We built Agile Decision to turn these challenges into opportunities, placing the power of innovation directly in the hands of those closest to the market.

3. State of Competition

The competitive landscape is fragmented. We compete with:

(1). Generic Low-Code Platforms: While offering configurability, they lack the deep, native insurance logic (e.g., actuarial models, clause libraries, regulatory rule sets) required for complex product development.

(2). Point Solutions: Specialized tools for pricing, compliance, or document management that operate in isolation, creating integration nightmares and data silos.

(3). Legacy Internal Processes: The biggest "competitor" is often the entrenched, manual, email-and-meeting-driven status quo.

Agile Decision's unique advantage is its integrated, insurance-native approach. We combine a low-code configuration environment with a built-in AI "co-pilot," a dynamic compliance engine, and a collaborative workspace designed specifically for the insurance product lifecycle. We are not just a tool; we are an enterprise decision-making operating system for insurance innovation.

4. Sources of Inspiration

Our vision was shaped by cross-industry best practices and technological trends:

(1). The Low-Code/No-Code Revolution: Democratizing software development for citizen developers.

(2). AI Assistants and Copilots: Leveraging large language models and knowledge graphs to provide intuitive, conversational guidance for complex tasks.

(3). Agile and DevOps Methodologies: Implementing principles of rapid iteration, continuous integration, and automated testing into product development.

(4). Collaboration Platforms (e.g., Figma, Notion): Inspiring our real-time, multi-role online review and version control features.

(5). RegTech (Regulatory Technology): Pioneering the concept of embedding regulatory rules directly into business processes to automate governance.

(6). Customer-Centric Design Thinking: Ensuring every feature shortens the path from understanding a customer need to delivering a solution.

5. Departments Involved

This is a truly cross-functional platform, built by and for the entire product value chain:

(1). Business & Product Teams: The primary users, defining product vision and customer requirements.

(2). Actuarial Department: Provided the core pricing models, risk assessment frameworks, and profitability guardrails integrated into the platform.

(3). Compliance & Legal: Partnered to codify over 2,000 regulatory rules into the system's real-time validation engine.

(4). Operations & Underwriting: Ensured all configured products translate seamlessly into operational workflows and policy issuance.

(5). IT & Enterprise Architecture: Developed the robust, scalable, and secure platform infrastructure using a microservices, API-first approach.

(6). Data Science & AI Team: Built the predictive models, recommendation algorithms, and natural language processing capabilities.

(7). Strategy & Business Units: Drove alignment with corporate innovation goals and measured business impact.

6. Main Results So Far

The implementation of Agile Decision has delivered transformative outcomes:

(1). Efficiency & Productivity:

Reduced the average product development cycle from 32 days to 11 days.

Enabled business teams to independently configure 85% of new products in 2025.

Achieved a 70% reduction in cross-departmental meetings and a 65% decrease in communication costs through online collaboration.

Increased component reusability to over 65%, with a library of 500+ standardized modules.

(2). Business Growth & Quality:

Generated ¥890 million in incremental premiums in 2025 directly from platform-enabled products.

Improved the product launch success rate to 92%, up from 75% in the traditional model.

Launched 33 new and iterated products rapidly into high-growth segments like health and pension insurance.

Increased customer conversion rates by 12% through AI-powered personalized recommendations.

Maintained a zero record of major compliance incidents due to proactive, automated checks.

(3). Organational Transformation:

Successfully shifted the IT team's role from "order takers" to "platform enablers" and "rule guardians."

Fostered a new culture of shared responsibility and "closed-loop" collaboration centered on a digital hub.

Created a living digital knowledge base, making product development traceable and accelerating the onboarding of new team members.

In conclusion, Agile Decision is more than a technological upgrade; it is a strategic reinvention of the insurance product innovation process. By merging business intuition with AI-powered execution, we are not just building products faster—we are building smarter, more compliant, and more competitive insurance offerings for the digital age.