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CDL is a UK insurance technology provider whose software supports insurance retailers including insurers, brokers, managing general agents and their customers across motor, home and other policy types. Its technology operates at significant scale, supporting more than 250 million quotes a year and eight million policies, representing £4.5 billion in gross written premium.
Its systems underpin many of the everyday experiences involved in buying and managing insurance, from generating prices for consumers via price comparison websites, through quote-and-buy to enabling policyholders to manage their cover through online self-service portals. From a provider perspective, CDL gives retailers the tools to enable mass distribution of products with real-time pricing and data insight, ensuring responsiveness to market conditions, competitive advantage and high levels of operational efficiency.
Operating at this scale demands more than individual software projects. CDL needs access to sustained engineering capability that can support existing platforms, respond to fluctuating demand and help the business develop new solutions as its products and markets evolve.
To support this, CDL began their long-term relationship with NashTech in 2018, through a dedicated offshore engineering team based in Vietnam; having everyone in one location was a key strategic decision for onsite collaboration. Rather than operating as a separate development supplier, the NashTech team has increasingly become embedded within CDL’s wider software engineering operation.
The challenge
Supporting continuous development at insurance scale
CDL’s engineering teams are responsible for software at the heart of the UK retail insurance market. This includes broker-facing systems, pricing engines, customer-facing policy management capabilities and the underlying services that connect them.
With CDL's technology supporting around 700,000 hub quotes every day, the resilience, scalability and continued evolution of its platforms are business critical. CDL must continue enhancing its existing products while responding to market opportunities, adopting new technology and maintaining the quality and scalability expected by its customers.
Engineering demand does not remain constant. Different initiatives require different combinations of front-end, back-end, testing and specialist capabilities. Building all that capacity permanently in-house can make it harder to respond quickly when priorities shift.
CDL therefore needed a delivery model that would provide:
- Flexibility to increase or reduce engineering capacity in response to demand
- Continuity of knowledge across long-term platform development
- Greater delivery coverage across UK and Vietnam working hours
- A team capable of becoming part of CDL’s engineering organisation
- A scalable approach that did not require CDL to manage the associated recruitment and line-management activity
The requirement was not simply for more developers. CDL wanted a dependable engineering capability that could understand its technology, work closely with its onshore teams and support strategic business objectives over the long term.
The solution
A dedicated team built around CDL’s priorities
With CDL investing more than £10 million in R&D each year, the requirement extends beyond maintaining existing platforms. CDL needs access to engineering capability that can evolve alongside its technology strategy, bringing additional skills and capacity as new priorities emerge. NashTech provides CDL with a dedicated engineering team through an Offshore Development Centre model in Da Nang.
Unlike a conventional project outsourcing arrangement, where a supplier delivers a predefined scope before moving on, the model gives CDL access to a long-term team that can contribute across strategic projects and the continuous development of its digital platforms.
The team has supported CDL’s core software systems, working alongside its UK engineering organisation. As CDL’s requirements have changed, NashTech has been able to introduce additional capabilities into the team, including front-end and test engineering expertise.
This has given CDL the flexibility to adjust capacity according to demand without having to take on the recruitment, employment and line-management responsibilities associated with scaling a permanent internal team.
An extension of the onshore engineering team
Creating an effective offshore engineering capability involves more than assembling a team. CDL and NashTech invested in making the relationship work at both an organisational and a personal level.
That included:
- Establishing clearer processes and accountabilities
- Addressing internal access, compliance and information-sharing constraints
- Creating open communication between offshore and onshore teams
- Enabling teams to discuss challenges as transparently as successes
- Bringing CDL colleagues to Vietnam for project kick-offs, workshops and handovers
- Bringing NashTech team members to the UK to meet and work directly with CDL colleagues
This investment helped move the engagement beyond a formal customer-supplier relationship. NashTech’s engineers gained a deeper understanding of CDL’s working environment and objectives, while CDL’s teams developed greater confidence in the offshore team’s capabilities.
“We basically see the NashTech team as an extension of our onshore teams. They work on our core projects and have become integrated into our delivery approach.”
Andrew Turner, Senior Technical Delivery Lead, CDL
Building openness into the delivery model
A significant turning point in the relationship was the development of greater openness between the two organisations.
Rather than treating progress updates as formal supplier reporting, CDL and NashTech created an environment in which teams could raise issues early, share when work was not proceeding as expected and solve problems together.
This gave CDL greater visibility and allowed both organisations to discuss what support was needed before an obstacle became a larger delivery risk. It also helped NashTech’s engineers feel able to challenge assumptions and contribute their own perspectives, instead of simply completing assigned tasks.
“We built the relationship to the point where the teams could share everything openly, whether it was a success or a failure. That transparency allowed us to discuss challenges and look at how we could support each other. Once we established that relationship, we began to see a real change in what the team could deliver.”
Ross McDonald, Software Development Manager, CDL
The relationship is now supported by regular collaboration between team members, shared working sessions and visits between the UK and Vietnam. CDL credits these human relationships with helping turn offshore capacity into productive engineering output.
Scaling engineering capacity without adding operational complexity
The dedicated model gives CDL access to engineering capacity that can be adjusted as its priorities change.
When CDL required additional front-end capability, for example, NashTech was able to add the relevant resource to the squad at relatively short notice. CDL could strengthen the team without having to run a separate recruitment process or assume responsibility for managing the additional employee.
The model also brings different technical experiences and problem-solving perspectives into CDL’s engineering environment. Combined with the time-zone difference between the UK and Vietnam, this extends the hours during which development activity can take place.
“Scalability is a key benefit from a business perspective. As demand fluctuates, NashTech has been very responsive. We can bring in the capacity and skills we need to support different projects, which is particularly valuable in an environment where demand is growing, and the pace of change is accelerating.”
Andrew Turner, CDL
Engineering at scale
CDL’s technology operates at significant scale, supporting 250 million+ quotes a year, eight million+ policies and £4.5 billion in gross written premium, alongside a network of 945 marketplace partners and 10+ aggregators.
NashTech engineers work alongside CDL’s teams on core retail platforms within this wider technology ecosystem. It means the partnership is not simply about providing additional development capacity, but contributing engineering expertise within an environment where scale, resilience and continuous evolution are critical.
A dependable team focused on shared outcomes
For CDL, one of the defining qualities of the relationship is the NashTech team’s sense of ownership.
During a working visit to Vietnam, CDL’s team identified analysis that was needed before workshops could continue. Despite working the same local hours as their CDL colleagues, the NashTech engineers completed the analysis before the teams reconvened the following morning.
The moment reinforced the team’s dependability and willingness to take responsibility for reaching a shared outcome.
“I’ve seen several instances where the team has gone above and beyond our expectations. If I need something done, I know I can depend on them to get on with it and complete it to the best of their ability. They are professional, dedicated and dependable.”
Ross McDonald, CDL
Looking ahead
The next stage of the relationship will focus on continuing to deliver against CDL’s strategic workstreams.
NashTech is already contributing to initiatives intended to support the company’s growth and entry into new markets. CDL wants the offshore engineers to become even more closely integrated into its delivery teams, building on the confidence created through previous projects.
AI-enabled engineering will also form part of that evolution. CDL and NashTech are exploring how AI tools and operating models can support development, testing and wider software delivery while drawing on the practical experience of teams in both the UK and Vietnam.
“In the future, I want us to be talking about how NashTech has continued to help deliver the strategic initiatives that support our growth into new markets.”
Ross McDonald, CDL
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