Speed Layer for Insurance: Unlocking Real-Time Data and Resilience in a Heavily Regulated Industry

The insurance industry is at a pivotal moment. As customer expectations for seamless, digital-first experiences rise and regulatory demands intensify, insurers face mounting pressure to modernize. Yet, deeply entrenched legacy systems, fragmented data, and the ever-present threat of fraud create formidable barriers to transformation. Publicis Sapient’s Speed Layer platform is purpose-built to help insurers overcome these challenges—unlocking real-time data, enabling operational resilience, and driving measurable business value.

The Unique Challenges Facing Insurers

Unlike other financial services sectors, insurance is defined by its complexity:

• Legacy Systems: Decades of mergers, acquisitions, and technology investments have left many insurers with a patchwork of incompatible systems. This fragmentation makes real-time data access and integration difficult, slowing innovation and increasing operational costs.
• Regulatory Complexity: Insurers must comply with a web of global and local regulations, from data privacy laws to evolving standards for transparency and reporting. Non-compliance can result in significant fines and reputational damage.
• Fraud and Risk: The need for robust, automated fraud detection is ever-present, as is the demand for rapid, accurate claims processing.
• Customer Expectations: Policyholders now expect hyper-personalized products, instant service, and seamless digital journeys—raising the bar for every insurer.

Introducing Speed Layer: A Platform for Real-Time, Resilient Insurance

Speed Layer is a data streaming platform designed to unlock the full potential of your data, regardless of where it resides. By decoupling data access from legacy systems, Speed Layer enables insurers to:

• Achieve 99.99% system availability for uninterrupted digital services
• Deliver millisecond-level performance for real-time analytics, customer engagement, and operational decisioning
• Accelerate product development by providing easy, repeatable access to data without disturbing core systems
• Reduce costs by offloading read workloads from expensive systems of record

How Speed Layer Works for Insurance

Speed Layer collects changes from legacy systems in real time using advanced change data capture and streaming technologies. This data is structured and stored in a highly scalable, cloud-native environment, making it instantly available to downstream applications via APIs and microservices. The result: all digital channels—web, mobile, agent portals—can access up-to-date information without the bottlenecks of legacy infrastructure.

Solving Insurance’s Most Pressing Pain Points

1. Legacy Modernization Without Disruption

Speed Layer enables insurers to modernize incrementally, using proven strategies like the ‘strangler’ approach. This allows for the gradual replacement of legacy components, minimizing risk and ensuring business continuity. Integration with existing applications is seamless, supporting both greenfield innovation and brownfield transformation.

2. Real-Time Data Access and Hyper-Personalization

By breaking down data silos, Speed Layer creates unified customer profiles and supports real-time analytics. Insurers can deliver hyper-personalized products, proactive communications, and tailored offers—driving engagement and loyalty.

3. Automated Fraud Detection and Claims Processing

Speed Layer’s architecture supports the integration of AI and machine learning models for automated fraud detection and risk management. Claims can be processed faster and more accurately, with suspicious activity flagged in real time. This not only reduces losses but also enhances customer trust.

4. Regulatory Compliance and Data Governance

Speed Layer embeds robust data governance frameworks, including centralized data platforms, automated data quality checks, and transparent lineage tracking. This ensures compliance with regulations such as GDPR and evolving privacy standards, while providing auditable, secure data flows.

5. Operational Efficiency and Cost Savings

By offloading data access from core systems and leveraging industry-standard open-source technologies, Speed Layer delivers significant cost savings. Infrastructure costs are reduced, and operational agility is increased—enabling insurers to respond quickly to market changes and regulatory shifts.

Real-World Impact: Measurable Outcomes

Speed Layer has delivered transformative results for leading financial institutions:

• Milliseconds-level microservice response times (as low as 7ms)
• 99.99%+ system availability for digital services
• Substantial infrastructure cost savings (e.g., €4 million saved through early pilot testing)
• Automated test coverage exceeding 95%, ensuring reliability and compliance
• Rapid data reconciliation (processing hundreds of millions of records in under an hour)

These outcomes translate directly to the insurance sector, where always-on digital services, rapid claims processing, and robust compliance are non-negotiable.

Why Publicis Sapient?

With decades of experience in insurance and financial services, Publicis Sapient brings:

• Deep industry expertise in navigating regulatory complexity and legacy modernization
• A proven SPEED framework—Strategy, Product, Experience, Engineering, and Data & AI—ensuring holistic, outcome-driven transformation
• End-to-end partnership, from strategy and architecture to implementation and ongoing optimization
• Cutting-edge technology, leveraging cloud, AI, and data streaming to future-proof your business

The Future of Insurance is Data-Driven, Agile, and Resilient

Insurers who embrace real-time data and resilient architectures will lead the industry in customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and regulatory compliance. Speed Layer is the catalyst for this transformation—unlocking the value of your data, enabling innovation at speed, and building a foundation for the next generation of insurance.

Ready to unlock real-time data and resilience for your insurance business? Connect with Publicis Sapient to start your transformation journey today.