Pekka Hirvonen, a coder working from Oulu, joined OP’s payroll tempted by modern technologies and opportunities for constant self-development. “Although this is a large financial institution that could be seen as rigid and set in its way; it is far from that – OP is on the crest of technology wave, and every day is a day for learning and experiencing new things.”

Diverse range of duties and continuous enhancement of skills

Pekka Hirvonen, who works in OP’s Loss Reporting reform team, is responsible for the service architecture of the Pohjola Insurance loss reporting in his developer role and for its development. When an insurance customer reports a loss, it takes place through multi-channel solutions that Pekka’s team maintains both for personal and corporate customers.

The purpose is to make the customer’s loss reporting process as clear, easy and well-informed as possible, including subsequent processes.

Pekka’s daily work consists of a variety of duties: one week may include improving the infrastructure of services, the other weeks may include the planning and implementation of integrations between systems and user interface planning to facilitate a smooth customer experience. As a matter of fact, Pekka is thankful to his employer for the fact that he can influence his job description according to his own competence areas, interests and willingness to enhance skills. The 70:20:10-model and OP’s Software Academy support competence development.

“In part 10 of the 70:20:10 model, I have concentrated on enhancing my expertise, such as AWS. However, Software Academy offers many other contents, such as learning about DevOps practices. The best of all in OP’s competence development is that no one dictates what you should study, but you can make up your mind yourself in this respect.”

Combining business and technology at the core of everything we do

Before joining OP, Pekka, who graduated as an automation engineer, worked on payment services for a long time, so working in the financial sector was already familiar to the self-taught coder. However, the insurance sector in all of its varieties has been a totally new territory, and understanding and internalising the business as part of daily work has meant just enough challenges to the Oulu citizen.

“Our work is not based only on development methods because business itself is at the core and how it combines with technology. This means that I as developer must also understand the insurance business from the perspective of both personal and corporate customers.”

So, Pekka has the biggest feelings of success just when the solution his has discovered has been based on new insights while having a positive effect on customers’ daily life.

A great team spirit carries throughout Finland

Pekka describes his team of less than 20 members as a positive and integrated group of people with joint responsibility for outputs. The exceptionally big team has a diverse range of professionals, such as developers, program testers, solutions analysts and agile masters. Most of them work in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.

In addition to Pekka, a few other team members live outside Helsinki but distant locations have not affected the team spirit. This is taken care of by the product owner who ensures that the team meets face-to-face several times a year – also outside working hours. This is what Pekka appreciates a lot because although work can be easily done remotely, nothing can replace meetings in person.