Videos
Credendo Transforms IT to Enable Secure Scale and an AI-First Future
Insights
- IT operating models matter as much as technology. Clear ownership and accountability are essential to reducing technical debt and scaling securely.
- Resilience, security, and compliance are now table stakes; competitive advantage comes when IT also enables continuous business transformation.
- AI delivers value when it augments expertise, freeing underwriters from manual work so they can focus on judgment, risk, and strategic decisions.
In this conversation, leaders from Credendo and Infosys reflect on a multi-year IT transformation designed to support secure growth amid rising regulatory, security, and business complexity. Tom Berx, Chief Information Officer at Credendo, Jon Holvoet, Chief Technology Officer at Credendo, and Tarang Puranik, EVP at Infosys, describe how the organization moved from rapid digital expansion and accumulated technical debt to a redesigned operating model built around a single accountable partner. They explain how this shift improved resilience, compliance, and execution, and how an AI first strategy is now enabling underwriters to focus on higher value decisions while automation removes friction across the enterprise.
Jon Holvoet:
But with the big focus on the business functionality, we did build up quite some technical debt and that made it difficult to continue to scale, difficult to keep it secure with the ongoing regulations and compliance and also difficult to keep achieving our strategic objectives.
Tom Berx:
After the go live, the platform, the multi-risk business, we actually changed our IT operating model and we went for one accountable IT partner.
Tarang Puranik:
Hi, I am Tarang Puranik, EVP at Infosys. It is my pleasure to talk to the leaders from Credendo and European Credit Insurance Group based on IT transformation that they have done. To explore this topic, I have with me Tom, the Chief Information Officer for Credendo and Jon, who is the CTO at Credendo. Welcome gentlemen, looking forward to this conversation.
Tell us briefly about Credendo overall.
Tom Berx:
We are one of the leading European credit insurers. For more than a century we are helping companies navigate uncertainty by protecting them against commercial and political risk. We operate with a unique mix of public mandates and private market expertise servicing our customers across the globe and enabling safe and sustainable international trade for them.
Tarang Puranik:
Given the context of Credendo’s business, how are you looking at IT delivering that value for your customers?
Tom Berx:
Our business partner actually asks IT to be secure, resilient and compliant. But apart from that, it's quite clear that IT also needs to enable the transformations. To be able to cope with the change, the change coming from the customer, coming from the market. And in that plan, that aspect, Infosys plays a very important role.
Tarang Puranik:
So Jon, the next question is for you. So given this journey and thought process, how did Credendo start? Where were you a couple of years back and what were some of the challenges that you were facing then?
Jon Holvoet:
Well Tarang, our digital transformation journey started over 12 years ago and we went live with the multi-risk business a little bit over four years ago, largely supported by Infosys and followed by the single risk activity almost a year ago. But with the big focus on the business functionality, we did build up quite some technical debt and that made it difficult to continue to scale, difficult to keep it secure with the ongoing regulations and compliance and also difficult to keep achieving our strategic objectives.
Tarang Puranik:
So Tom, what did you do to fix these problems?
Tom Berx:
After the go live, the platform, the multi-risk business, we actually changed our IT operating model and we went for one accountable IT partner. And that is where Infosys came into play. So nowadays, not only application management services but also infrastructure management services and workplace services have been out forced to Infosys and that is actually one of the pillars of our new IT operating model which basically is one of the main drivers in solving one of the problems of the past.
Tarang Puranik:
In today's world, in IT, it would be incomplete to have a conversation without talking about AI. So, what is the AI strategy that Credendo is adopting and where do you see AI helping the Credendo business?
Jon Holvoet:
Credendo has clearly enabled an AI-first strategy. By investing in AI technology, we will enable our underwriters to focus more on tasks that matter and that bring added value to the organization. By using the technology to remove friction and to automate certain tasks that would otherwise require a lot of manual input.
Tarang Puranik:
Thank you so much, Tom and John. Thank you for your thoughts on the subject.
