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☁️ '''Public cloud''' refers to computing infrastructure — servers, storage, networking, and an expanding array of platform services — owned and operated by a third-party provider and made available to multiple organizations over the internet on a shared, pay-as-you-go basis. For the insurance industry, public cloud platforms from providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud have become foundational to modernization strategies, enabling [[Definition:Insurance carrier | carriers]], [[Definition:Reinsurance | reinsurers]], and [[Definition:Broker | brokers]] to replace costly on-premises data centers with scalable, elastic infrastructure that can be provisioned in minutes rather than months.

🔧 Insurers leverage public cloud across a wide range of use cases. [[Definition:Catastrophe modeling | Catastrophe modeling]] teams, for example, can spin up thousands of compute instances to run simulations during hurricane season and release them afterward, paying only for what they use — a dramatic improvement over maintaining idle hardware year-round. [[Definition:Policy administration | Policy administration]] and [[Definition:Claims management | claims]] platforms offered by leading [[Definition:Insurance technology vendor | insurance technology vendors]] are increasingly delivered as cloud-native SaaS products hosted on public cloud infrastructure. [[Definition:Actuarial analysis | Actuarial]] and [[Definition:Data analytics | data analytics]] teams use public cloud machine learning services to build [[Definition:Predictive modeling | predictive models]] for [[Definition:Underwriting | underwriting]] and [[Definition:Fraud detection | fraud detection]]. However, adoption in insurance comes with heightened scrutiny. Regulators worldwide — including EIOPA in Europe, the PRA in the United Kingdom, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and US state [[Definition:Department of insurance | insurance departments]] — have issued specific guidance on outsourcing to cloud providers, requiring insurers to demonstrate adequate data governance, exit strategies, and operational resilience controls.

🌐 The broader significance of public cloud for the insurance sector lies in how it reshapes competitive dynamics. Smaller [[Definition:Managing general agent (MGA) | MGAs]] and [[Definition:Insurtech | insurtechs]] can now access the same enterprise-grade infrastructure as large incumbents, lowering barriers to entry and accelerating time-to-market for new [[Definition:Insurance product | products]]. At the same time, established carriers pursuing [[Definition:Cloud migration | cloud migration]] can redirect capital from maintaining aging hardware toward innovation. Data residency requirements complicate the picture in certain jurisdictions — particularly where regulators mandate that policyholder data remain within national borders — but major cloud providers have responded by expanding their regional data center footprints. As the industry moves toward real-time data exchange, open APIs, and embedded insurance models, public cloud infrastructure has become less of a technology choice and more of a prerequisite for participation in modern insurance ecosystems.

'''Related concepts:'''
{{Div col|colwidth=20em}}
* [[Definition:Cloud migration]]
* [[Definition:Operational resilience]]
* [[Definition:Software as a service (SaaS)]]
* [[Definition:Data protection]]
* [[Definition:Insurtech]]
* [[Definition:Catastrophe modeling]]
{{Div col end}}

Definition:Public cloud - Revision history

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