Sanlam improves user experience and productivity by empowering engineers with GitHub Copilot

Founded over a century ago, Sanlam Life Insurance has centered its purpose on empowering generations to be financially confident, secure, and prosperous, promoting financial inclusion, transformation, and empowerment through its broad product range, financial advice, and inclusive culture.

“Sanlam’s digital transformation began with the goal to build superior experiences for our customers and make their lives as easy as possible,” explains Theo Mabaso, Group Chief Information Officer at Sanlam.

This includes creating digital, automated, and simple processes for a simple, seamless user experience, and developing digital-first business models to support financial inclusion, which is a specific focus of the recently established Sanlam FinTech cluster. “With our engineers being the ones who actually enable the delivery of this transformation through back-to-front engineering, we jumped at the opportunity to improve their experience,” adds Mabaso. “We have a very pointed focus on embedding AI into our business across all value chains, and this allowed us to enhance the experience and relieve the administrative burden within our own teams.”

Optimized Engineering Delivery

"The idea came from a couple of email exchanges with the Microsoft team," recalls Martin van der Zee, Strategy Lead, Group Technology at Sanlam. "When GitHub Copilot launched, everyone was talking about it; there was a lot of hype. And then Microsoft suggested we try it out, after which we saw an opportunity that aligned to the strategic direction of driving the embedding of AI and automation, and enabling simple, largely contactless modern engineering processes."

In the process, Sanlam became the fastest and largest adopter of GitHub Copilot in South Africa—an unexpected yet welcome achievement, and adoption is not slowing down. With support from Microsoft and GitHub teams, Sanlam implemented Copilot and Azure DevOps in a few days, including training. “We had security standards and controls to cover, and our partners guided us every step of the way on what needed to be done,” adds Khalid Ameerodien, Cloud Service Delivery Manager, Group Technology at Sanlam.

The speed of implementation trickled over into actual operations. Engineers previously bogged down with administrative tasks, context switching and searching for solutions now found themselves significantly more efficient and productive. "The typical engineer has a lot of technical knowledge. And when they run into an issue which they can’t solve by themselves, they ask a colleague, or look it up online. You can imagine how that slows down the engineering process," Van der Zee explains. GitHub Copilot streamlined this process, serving up answers as our engineers worked, enabling them to focus more on engineering, while also developing sample data for testing purposes, which is often a bit of a task and time away from the IDE.

Copilot also provided specific code suggestions, enhancing quality, and reducing the need for managerial oversight. Ameerodien highlights, "GitHub Copilot made excellent recommendations on how to optimize our existing code, making it easier to maintain, and the code executes with fewer resources. The solution has become a sounding board for our staff."

These changes not only improved their workflows but also accelerated the delivery of new features and products. “Friction in the process slows us down and prevents us getting to market faster," explains van der Zee. Like any insurance organization, Sanlam must maintain robust security, privacy, confidentiality, and regulatory compliance whenever it optimizes existing products or launches new ones. Copilot has eased this process by facilitating the creation of unit tests during the engineering process, helping debug code and shorten the review cycle, while reducing errors in final-phase testing.”

But the proof of the new-found efficiency and productivity is in the numbers. "Time saved with GitHub Copilot varies between a remarkable 20% to 30%, and in some cases going as high as 50%," remarks Mabaso. “Copilot eliminates grunt work, which only leaves problem-solving to our staff, which is one of the core goals of our AI transformation and modern engineering drive.”

Van der Zee agrees. “We have been able to shift two key metrics at the same time—engineer experience and time to market. That has helped us build new levels of employee engagement, as people feel empowered, they are growing and able to perform at higher levels, which leads to transformative outcomes for Sanlam.

The engineers themselves echo this sentiment. In an extensive survey of its staff, Sanlam saw many positive sentiments, with one engineer noting, “I can't see a way to not use it. Even with the little code I write, the productivity gains are massive.” Another engineer expressed, “I feel at least five times more productive with GitHub Copilot!”

Since engineers tend to gravitate to workplaces where they can use the latest frameworks, tools, and technologies, GitHub Copilot’s implementation positively influenced Sanlam's recruitment efforts. Van der Zee highlights, “We used GitHub Copilot in our campaign to attract graduates for the Sanlam Digital and Data Academy and, this year, we had the highest number of applications ever in that program! It may not be completely causal, but we believe the drive in the adoption of AI, cloud native platforms and modern engineering has been a key impact area.”

Finally, besides gains in productivity, Sanlam product teams can adapt to the evolving needs of the market more rapidly. Improvements to our experience platforms, integration and key backend components can get rolled out quicker, creating better customer and intermediary experiences. The benefits really go beyond the DevSecOps team,” shares van der Zee. "Once we saw the positive comments and the smiles on our engineers' faces, we knew we made the right choice with GitHub Copilot."