How Leading Chinese Insurers Achieved DevOps Maturity: Real-World Case Studies

Overview

Amid digital transformation, enterprises adopt DevOps to boost IT efficiency. The DevOps Capability Maturity Model led by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) provides strong guidance, helping industry leaders assess and improve IT capabilities, integrate teams, and better support business systems.

Insurance Companies Assessed

Three insurance firms have completed DevOps maturity assessments:

People's Insurance Company of China (PICC)

Taikang Insurance Group

China Life Property & Casualty Insurance

PICC Distributed Core System

The project combines cloud, distributed, and micro‑service technologies with PICC’s business needs. Key features include:

Three‑tier architecture (front‑, middle‑, back‑office) enabling modular, Lego‑style system construction and rapid adaptation to business model changes.

Technology stack based on PICC’s proprietary distributed micro‑service framework (PDF‑C) and advanced database technologies for high‑concurrency stability.

Infrastructure built on a private‑cloud and container platform, providing elastic scaling, multi‑active data centers, and 2,000 km cross‑region traffic diversion for high availability.

Taikang "Taishang" Platform

The "Taishang" system evolved from a legacy platform with issues in scalability, maintainability, and stability. Taikang undertook a phased refactor, replacing old code while continuously delivering new features, using a step‑by‑step stripping strategy driven by business needs. After more than two years, the platform achieved full migration.

China Life Agricultural Claims System

This next‑generation core system supports the full insurance claims workflow for agricultural products, offering rich functionality, advanced technology, and user‑friendly design. Through a Level‑3 continuous delivery assessment, the project achieved:

100% unit‑test pass rate and 100% automated API‑test coverage, reducing technical debt.

Average requirement delivery cycle of ~5 days and build time under 15 minutes, with >90% automated build success.

About the DevOps Capability Maturity Model

The model, jointly developed by CAICT, the Cloud Computing Open Source Industry Alliance, the Efficient Operations Community, and leading internet, finance, and telecom companies, is the first comprehensive DevOps standard in China and has been adopted by many top enterprises. It was officially concluded by the ITU‑T in July 2020, becoming the world’s first international DevOps standard. The assessment framework covers agile development management, continuous delivery, technology operations, application design, security & risk management, and system & tool evaluation.