From Traditional to Real-Time - How We Transform Allianz with Eventing
Abstract
Embark with us on the journey of transforming a 130-year-old insurance powerhouse from traditional batch processing to real-time event-driven architecture. This talk shares the practical experiences, challenges, and successes of implementing eventing and streaming at Allianz Germany.
Business has the urgent need to adapt quickly and efficiently to new challenges and customer needs. For that reason, we implemented an event-driven architecture (EDA) based on verticals and microservices. This transformation goes beyond technology — it’s about changing mindset, processes, and organizational structures.
We’ll discuss the issues to be solved and hurdles to be taken in order to implement event-driven architecture in a complex enterprise landscape. You’ll hear about our approaches to communication, mindset change, technical enablement, training, governance, and onboarding processes.
Why Real-Time Matters for Insurance
Traditional insurance systems were built for a different era—one where batch processing overnight was sufficient. Today’s business demands are fundamentally different:
- Customer Expectations: Real-time responsiveness and hyper-personalized experiences
- Business Agility: Rapid adaptation to market changes and new opportunities
Event-driven architecture enables us to meet these demands while modernizing our technical landscape.
The Transformation Journey
Our Approach: Four Pillars
1. Communication & Mindset
- Regular workshops bringing IT and business together
- Sharing success stories and lessons learned across teams
- Creating a community of practice around eventing
- Transparent communication about challenges and solutions
2. Technical Enablement
- Central eventing platform based on Apache Kafka
- Architecture blueprints and guidelines
- Proof of Concepts in the enterprise environment
- Self-service capabilities for teams
3. Training & Knowledge Transfer
- Comprehensive training programs for developers and architects
- Domain-Driven Design workshops
- Hands-on labs and coding dojos
- Mentoring programs pairing experienced and new teams
4. Governance & Standards
- Event schema governance and versioning
- Quality gates and architecture reviews
- Reusable patterns and components
- Continuous improvement feedback loops
Key Insights
What Worked Well
The key is communication. Stakeholder based communication is needed for the real transformation, in addtion:
- Lighthouse Projects: Starting with visible, high-value use cases built credibility
- Cross-Functional Teams: Including business stakeholders from the beginning ensured alignment
- Incremental Approach: Step-by-step transformation rather than big-bang migration
- Community Building: Creating networks of practitioners across the organization
The Impact
The transformation to event-driven architecture has delivered tangible benefits:
- Faster Time to Market: New features deployed in days instead of months
- Improved Customer Experience: Real-time processing and personalization
- Better System Integration: Decoupled, loosely-coupled services
- Enhanced Resilience: Better fault tolerance and system reliability
- Increased Reusability: Shared events and services across domains
Looking Forward
The journey from traditional to real-time is ongoing. As we continue to expand event-driven architecture across Allianz Germany, we’re focusing on:
- Scaling the platform to more domains and use cases
- Enhancing our event governance and discovery capabilities
- Advancing our monitoring and observability
- Building the next generation of event-driven applications
This talk was held at inscom 2025 on September 23, 2025.
Speakers: Jens Müller, Fabrizio Lazzaretti
Links
Related Talks
- Eventing@Allianz Germany - An architectural transformation journey - Our earlier presentation at Confluent Data in Motion Tour 2024
- Streaming & Eventing for Top Management - How to convince decision makers to support the transformation
