Labuan Reinsurance (L) Ltd (Labuan Re) has successfully overhauled its IT infrastructure by migrating to HPE servers powered by 4th Gen AMD EPYC™ processors. The strategic move, driven by a need for greater performance and sustainability, has yielded significant operational improvements, including a 70% reduction in batch processing times and a marked decrease in data center footprint.
For the Malaysian reinsurance firm, which provides coverage to clients across Asia and the Middle East, the upgrade was necessitated by the relocation of its data center from Kuala Lumpur to a green co-hosting facility in Cyberjaya. The company sought to address persistent performance bottlenecks while adhering to a strict Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) roadmap required by its international clientele.
Breaking the Legacy Cycle
Historically reliant on Intel Xeon-based infrastructure, Labuan Re took a bold step by evaluating alternative platforms during its data center relocation. Patrick Wong, CIO of Labuan Reinsurance, noted the hesitation common in the financial services industry regarding infrastructure changes but emphasized the necessity of the switch.
“We saw it as an opportunity to explore other computing platforms,” said Wong. “Most of the data centers in Malaysia are already using AMD for shared services. We took the opportunity to try AMD EPYC processors.”
The company deployed HPE ProLiant servers equipped with 16-core AMD EPYC™ 9124 processors, migrating 100% of its production workloads—including its core reinsurance transactional database and intranet portals—to the new architecture.
Performance and Efficiency Gains
The impact of the migration was immediate. Critical batch jobs that previously took up to eight hours are now completed in less than two. Similarly, the company’s underwriting dashboard processing time dropped from six hours to just one, and profitability calculations were reduced from seven hours to one hour.
Beyond raw performance, the move generated substantial efficiency gains:
- Reduced Footprint: The consolidation of servers allowed Labuan Re to cut its rack usage from three to two, reducing rental costs by 30%.
- Sustainability: The combination of energy-efficient AMD processors and a switch to all-Flash storage helped the company meet the green certification standards required by its global partners, including Lloyd’s of London.
Future-Ready for AI
The new infrastructure has also positioned Labuan Re to explore advanced analytics and artificial intelligence. The company is currently piloting an AI initiative aimed at automating risk assessment. Early results suggest the system could reduce the turnaround time for underwriting assessments from weeks to under a day.
“If you’re planning for growth, virtualization, or analytics-heavy workloads, AMD EPYC CPUs are a smart and future-ready choice,” Wong concluded, signaling a shift in how financial institutions may view non-legacy hardware solutions moving forward.
