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Microsoft Financial Services United Kingdom

Hastings Direct

Customer Service Automation · Enterprise Knowledge Search · System Migration

When you ask Microsoft to get engaged, you can make real progress." No cloud left behind Because one of its core applications—insurance industry stalwart Guidewire—had a multicast networking feature, Hastings Direct needed a cloud solution capable of handling that functionality.

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5 times faster.
Hastings Direct increased performance by 1.6 times
Hastings Direct increased performance by 1.6 times and now handles adjustments 4 and 5 times faster.
Hastings Direct is an insurance company that presents 500,000 quotes a day to roughly 4 million customers for home

Reported impact

Business outcome

To improve its market share and deliver better, faster customer journeys, the company moved its workloads to Microsoft Azure VMware Solution.

  • Customer Experience
  • Productivity Improvement
  • Revenue Growth
  • Scalability

Solution

Hastings Direct used Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Foundry, Azure Cosmos DB to replace disconnected manual workflows with a more consistent digital operating model. Where generative AI is involved, Azure OpenAI handles the language understanding layer while connected data and workflow services keep responses grounded in enterprise context. It also connects with surrounding systems such as Call-center telephony, which lets the new Azure-based workflow fit into existing operations rather than standing apart from them. To improve its market share and deliver better, faster customer journeys, the company moved its workloads to Microsoft Azure VMware Solution.

Data flow

Content and operational context are prepared in the application data layer, passed to Azure OpenAI for generation or extraction, stored in Azure Cosmos DB, and returned through the user-facing application to employees or customers with grounded responses.

Solution architecture

5 components · 4 layers
  1. Compute
    • Azure OpenAI Service Runs large language model inference for summarization, extraction, conversational AI, and grounded answers.
    • Azure Kubernetes Service Hosts scalable APIs, microservices, and model-serving workloads in containers.
  2. Storage
    • Azure Cosmos DB Persists low-latency application data, conversation state, or operational records.
  3. Serving
    • Power BI Delivers dashboards, reports, and self-service analytics to business users.
  4. Orchestration
    • Azure AI Foundry Provides the managed environment for model orchestration, experimentation, and responsible AI operations.

Architecture clues

  • 4 million customers
  • Runs scalable containerized services on Azure Kubernetes Service.
  • Uses Azure OpenAI for grounded generation or large-scale extraction workloads.

Evidence from the source

Azure Cosmos DB to support Azure-native deployments.
Microsoft 365 E5 , such as using Power BI to assist with data analysis and visualizations.
The company uses a host of other Microsoft solutions to propel its business forward, including: Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to run its customer journeys.
To improve its market share and deliver better, faster customer journeys, the company moved its workloads to Microsoft Azure VMware Solution.
When you ask Microsoft to get engaged, you can make real progress." No cloud left behind Because one of its core applications—insurance industry stalwart Guidewire—had a multicast networking feature, Hastings Direct needed a cloud solution...
Transparency Evidence & methodology 100/100 reference value · 89% confidence · 1 source

Review how this reference was scored and trace each normalized claim back to its documented source.

01

Scoring methodology

How scores are calculated

Customer Reference Value measures usefulness as a customer reference. Evidence Confidence measures the quality and traceability of available evidence, not independent verification.

Customer reference value100/100
  • Problem clarity20/20
    Measures whether the customer's operational problem is specific enough to compare.
  • Implementation depth25/25
    Rewards named components, data flow, integrations, and architecture detail.
  • Outcome specificity20/20
    Measures whether the reported benefit is concrete rather than a generic claim.
  • Quantified impact25/25
    5 metrics describe measurable impact.
  • Deployment scale10/10
    Rewards evidence of a live or scaled deployment and meaningful integration scope.
Evidence confidence89%
  • Source authority20/25
    The main evidence is an official vendor-published customer story.
  • Claim traceability21/25
    10 of 12 key fields link to a named source.
  • Direct evidence20/20
    5 direct source quotes retained.
  • Date provenance10/10
    The publication date comes from the source page or publisher.
  • Source transparency8/10
    1 source reference document publisher, URL, authority, retrieval, and supported fields.
  • Implementation specificity10/10
    Rewards source-backed components, data flow, quantified impact, and a specific outcome.
02

Traceability

Sources & provenance

Field coverage shows which facts each source supports. Dates are shown only when documented by the source.

  1. Microsoft

    Hastings Direct customer story

    First-party
    https://www.microsoft.com/en/customers/story/1667693803542142014-hastings-direct-insurance-azure
    Source type
    Vendor-published customer story
    Published
    Jan 23, 2024
    Supports
    • Customer
    • Business problem
    • Solution
    • Products
    • Solution components
    • Data flow
    • Integrations
    • technical area
    • use case category
    • Business outcome
    • outcome category
    • Metrics
    • Architecture
    • evidence quotes
    • Publication date

Date evidence

  • Published on source page Jan 23, 2024 · Microsoft · First-party
    Open date source
Not separately sourced Industry, Region, Company size. Treat these normalized attributes as lower-confidence until a dedicated source is added.

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