Forrester’s Know-how Technique Influence Award celebrates expertise groups which have mastered the artwork of high-performance IT. The 2025 APAC winners show that when expertise organizations nail alignment, belief, and adaptivity, they don’t simply help the enterprise, they speed up it.
Congratulations to this 12 months’s winners: FWD Group and YCH Group, and to AIA Group, our 2025 runner-up. Every group constructed the expertise and enterprise capabilities their enterprise technique demanded, then executed with the precision and agility that separates market leaders from the pack.
FWD Group: Remodeling Insurance coverage By Excessive-Efficiency IT
FWD Group is a pan-Asian life and well being insurer working in 10 of the area’s fastest-growing markets. With a daring imaginative and prescient of fixing the way in which individuals really feel about insurance coverage, FWD has adopted a customer-led and tech-enabled strategy in its enterprise. By its cloud-first technique, AI-powered platforms, and a relentless deal with buyer expertise, FWD has reworked itself right into a high-performance IT group that’s agile, trusted, and aligned to ship measurable enterprise influence in a number of methods:
Strategic alignment that drives measurable enterprise outcomes. FWD’s IT staff operates as a strategic accomplice, codeveloping priorities with enterprise leaders and aligning initiatives via sturdy portfolio administration. Platforms like FWD Dice, a digital gross sales enablement platform, and FWD Opus, an operations administration platform, are tightly built-in with enterprise targets, delivering tangible outcomes akin to a 40% enhance in common energetic brokers and a 13% rise in month-to-month common APE in Thailand, from October 2023 to June 2024.
Adaptivity via steady studying and agile execution. With over 22,000 cloud coaching programs accomplished and 960+ certifications earned, FWD has constructed a tradition of steady studying. Their six Facilities of Excellence quickly pilot and scale rising applied sciences like genAI, whereas agile practices and real-time suggestions loops, such because the Voice of Buyer program, guarantee swift responsiveness to market and buyer wants.
Belief constructed on safety, resilience, and accountable innovation. FWD’s Zero Belief structure, ISO 27001-aligned cybersecurity framework, and Accountable AI Normal guarantee safe, moral, and resilient operations. With 100% penetration testing on customer-facing apps and 98% completion of safety coaching throughout all enterprise items, FWD has earned stakeholder confidence and trade recognition, together with the Cyber Safety Excellence Award and Cloud Community Safety Award.
YCH Group: Redefining Logistics By Excessive-Efficiency IT
YCH Group is a Singapore-based logistics firm executing a serious expertise transformation throughout Asia Pacific. The corporate operates built-in provide chain options, partnering with Y3 Applied sciences Pte Ltd, via initiatives like Provide Chain Metropolis® and SuperPortTM, deploying automation, AI, IoT, and knowledge platforms to modernize warehousing, distribution, and commerce finance operations. By integrating robotics-enabled amenities with autonomous logistics methods, YCH is advancing a digitally linked, clever provide chain that serves prospects throughout a number of industries within the area. YCH’s key tenets of its high-performance expertise technique that underpins this success are:
Strategic tech-business alignment at scale. YCH’s IT technique is tightly built-in with its enterprise imaginative and prescient, making certain that each expertise funding — from robotics to cloud adoption — instantly helps development, effectivity, and sustainability. By structured planning, agile governance, and real-time suggestions loops, YCH has delivered transformative enterprise outcomes like a serious discount so as processing time and improved fulfilment accuracy.
Adaptivity via modular structure and agile execution. YCH’s modular, cloud-native structure and dynamic portfolio administration allow speedy responses to market shifts. From pandemic-era pivots to AI-based demand forecasting, their agile innovation mannequin — together with digital innovation cells and Y3’s technological strengths — ensures steady studying and fast-tracked execution throughout the enterprise.
Belief constructed on resilience, safety, and outcomes. YCH’s tech group has earned the belief of world companions by delivering safe, resilient, and high-performing digital infrastructure. With ISO 27001 certification, secured structure, and 99.95% uptime, the IT staff ensures operational continuity and knowledge safety at scale. Their capability to codesign and combine complicated methods was instrumental in securing a regional enterprise growth with a world luxurious model — a testomony to the IT staff’s function as a trusted enabler of development, innovation, and long-term partnerships throughout the availability chain ecosystem.
AIA Group: Scaling Innovation With Function And Precision
Our runner-up, AIA Group, is the most important unbiased publicly listed pan-Asian life and well being insurer and has undergone a sweeping digital transformation throughout its 18 markets via its Know-how, Digital, and Analytics (TDA) program. With over $800 million invested since 2020, AIA has constructed a future-ready expertise basis that’s now powering one of the vital bold genAI methods within the insurance coverage trade.
Enterprisewide alignment with strategic development drivers. AIA’s TDA program is embedded on the core of its company technique, instantly supporting its mission to assist individuals reside more healthy, longer, higher lives. With senior management accountability, shared KPIs, and a centralized governance mannequin, AIA ensures that each expertise initiative — from AI-powered underwriting to digital distribution — is tightly aligned with enterprise outcomes.
Adaptivity via cloud, expertise, and genAI at scale. AIA’s cloud-first technique has enabled 90% cloud adoption throughout the Group, laying a robust basis for agility and innovation. Infrastructure automation has accelerated expertise deployment by 90%, considerably boosting operational effectivity. With over 14,000 hours of studying logged in 2024 and the launch of the AIA Tech Academy in 2025, AIA has constructed a future-ready workforce able to scaling genAI throughout the insurance coverage worth chain — from customer support to software program growth.
Belief anchored in accountable AI and cyber resilience. AIA’s Accountable AI Normal, Group AI Council, and over 9,500 knowledge high quality guidelines guarantee moral, safe, and clear AI deployment. With ISO 27001 certification and 99.9% system availability, AIA has earned the boldness of shoppers and regulators alike — enabling 85% of buyer interactions to movement via straight-through processing and delivering over $180 million in annualized efficiencies.
Congratulations to all three firms and because of the entire firms that submitted entries this 12 months. Hope to see you all at Know-how & Innovation Summit APAC in Sydney on August 19 the place we’ll have fun our winners in a particular keynote session.