Closing a $42m Gap: $17m in Savings for a Global Insurer
A global insurer uncovered $17m in annual savings, including $6m of quick wins, by aligning its cloud spend with proper governance and FinOps practice.
Company Overview
The client is a leading global insurance provider spending $67 million a year on cloud services against an Enterprise Discount Program of just $25 million, an EDP being a negotiated discount that is tied to a committed level of spend.
That sizeable gap between actual spend and the commitment had raised concerns internally about escalating costs and the absence of robust FinOps practices, and the firm wanted an external partner to find immediate savings, test its own hypotheses, and put a longer-term plan in place.
Problem Statement
When spend runs at nearly three times the discount commitment, the question is not whether waste exists but where it sits and how much of it can be removed safely. The organisation needed that answered with evidence rather than assumption, and it needed a governance plan so the answer would still hold in a year's time.
Outcome Delivered
Against spend of $67 million a year on a $25 million commitment, the engagement found $17 million in annual savings, $6 million of it as immediate quick wins, and handed a dedicated FinOps team the policies and processes needed to keep future spend aligned with the business.
Executive Overview
The engagement identified $17 million in potential savings, including $6 million in quick wins, achieved through licence optimisation, clearing unused storage, rightsizing resources and improving utilisation.
We also recommended the policies and processes a dedicated FinOps team would own going forward, so the savings were sustained and future spend stayed aligned with business goals rather than drifting back up.
Our Approach
Using Optimus alongside other analysis tooling, we carried out a deep interrogation of the cloud estate, surfacing inefficiencies such as orphaned storage, underutilised resources and costly virtual desktop (VDI) usage.
We then sorted what we found into short-term wins and longer-term optimisation strategies, so the organisation could cut obvious waste immediately while building the foundation for sustainable governance, including new policies and processes to be run by a dedicated FinOps team.
Challenges
Challenges Faced
Every engagement starts with a clear-eyed view of what was actually getting in the way, because you cannot fix what you cannot see. Here we set out the real constraints the client was working within, the costs and risks they were carrying, and the gaps that needed closing before any meaningful progress could be made.
Let's Transform Your Enterprise Today
Send an EnquirySpend far above commitment
Spend of $67 million a year ran against an EDP commitment of just $25 million, a gap that worried leadership.
Escalating cost concern
Costs were escalating and there was real concern internally about where that trajectory led.
No robust FinOps practice
The organisation lacked robust FinOps practices to keep spend disciplined.
Savings needed validating
It needed savings opportunities validated with evidence, not asserted as hypotheses.
Deployed solutions
What We Did
A look at how we approached the work, from the first discovery sessions through to the changes we put in place, and the thinking behind each decision along the way. The aim is always the same, to deliver something measurable that the client owns and can build on, rather than a one-off fix that fades once we leave.
Deep estate interrogation
Optimus and supporting tooling drove a thorough interrogation of the estate, grounding every recommendation in evidence.
Licence optimisation
Optimising software licences removed cost without affecting the service being delivered.
Unused storage cleanup
Unused storage was identified and cleared, a common and low-risk source of recurring spend.
Rightsizing and utilisation
Rightsizing oversized resources and improving how they were used reduced cost while preserving performance.
Quick wins separated out
Of the $17 million identified, $6 million was set apart as quick wins the team could act on immediately.
Dedicated FinOps governance
New policies and processes were recommended for a dedicated FinOps team, so the gains would be maintained over time.