Modernizing Legacy Systems in Insurance: Unlocking Agility, Compliance, and Customer Experience

In the insurance industry, legacy technology is more than a technical challenge—it’s a barrier to agility, compliance, and the seamless, personalized experiences that today’s customers demand. As regulatory requirements intensify and digital-native competitors raise the bar for innovation, insurers must modernize their core systems to remain relevant, resilient, and ready for the future. Publicis Sapient stands at the forefront of this transformation, helping insurers move from outdated, siloed platforms to agile, cloud-native ecosystems that drive operational efficiency, regulatory confidence, and customer-centric growth.

The Legacy Challenge in Insurance

Decades-old core platforms, fragmented data, and manual processes are common across the insurance sector. These legacy environments make it difficult to:

The cost of inaction is significant: slow time-to-market, increased operational risk, and missed opportunities for innovation and customer engagement. Insurers that continue to rely on outdated systems face rising maintenance costs, greater exposure to cyber threats, and an inability to scale or personalize their offerings.

The Path Forward: Cloud-Native, Automated, and Data-Driven

Modernizing legacy systems is not just about technology upgrades—it’s about reimagining how insurance organizations operate, innovate, and serve their customers. Publicis Sapient’s approach is rooted in deep industry expertise and a proven track record of delivering measurable outcomes for insurers worldwide. Our modernization strategy is built on five key pillars:

1. Agile Engineering and Product Delivery

We embed agile principles across teams, shifting from project-based to product-based thinking. This enables rapid iteration, continuous learning, and faster delivery of new features and regulatory changes. Agile engineering ensures that customer and business value are at the heart of every initiative, driving both speed and quality.

2. Cloud Migration and Platform Modernization

Leveraging partnerships with leading cloud providers, we help insurers migrate critical workloads to secure, scalable cloud environments. Cloud adoption reduces costs, increases agility, and enhances compliance, disaster recovery, and the ability to innovate at scale. For example, a multinational insurer in Asia-Pacific implemented a cloud-based platform to enable rapid expansion, reduce costs, and deliver seamless, secure customer journeys across multiple markets.

3. Automation and Standardization

Manual, Excel-based processes are replaced with automated, modular platforms using Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD pipelines, and robust API integrations. This not only accelerates product launches but also reduces operational risk and ensures consistency across business units and geographies.

4. Security and Compliance by Design

Regulatory compliance and risk management are embedded from the outset. Our solutions ingrain robust controls, automated testing, and continuous monitoring to ensure every digital product meets the highest standards for data protection and regulatory adherence. Automated compliance controls and zero trust principles are standard, not optional—helping insurers stay ahead of evolving regulations and audit requirements.

5. Data-Driven Personalization and Insights

We unlock the power of data by connecting and refining it across the enterprise, making it actionable for both compliance and customer experience initiatives. Data modernization strategies enable real-time insights, predictive analytics, and personalized services—driving both operational efficiency and customer loyalty. For instance, insurers leveraging cloud-native data platforms can automate claims processing with AI-powered document analysis and deploy advanced risk modeling for more accurate pricing and underwriting.

Real-World Impact: Insurance Modernization in Action

Insurers partnering with Publicis Sapient have achieved:

A leading insurer in Asia-Pacific, for example, was able to rapidly expand into new markets and deliver secure, personalized customer journeys by modernizing its core systems on Microsoft Azure. Another top global insurer deepened relationships with brokers and customers by implementing a scalable, data-driven marketing platform.

Best Practices for Insurance Modernization

Drawing on cross-industry experience, several best practices emerge for insurers:

  1. Adopt a holistic, agile engineering mindset—move from project-based to product-based delivery, embedding agile principles across teams.
  2. Prioritize cloud migration—leverage secure, scalable cloud environments to reduce costs, increase agility, and enhance compliance.
  3. Automate and standardize—replace manual processes with automated, modular platforms and robust API integrations.
  4. Embed security and compliance by design—integrate security controls, automated testing, and continuous monitoring from the outset.
  5. Unlock data-driven value—connect and refine data across the enterprise to enable real-time insights, predictive analytics, and personalized services.

Why Publicis Sapient?

With over 30 years of experience in digital business transformation, Publicis Sapient is uniquely positioned to help insurers modernize with confidence. Our SPEED approach—Strategy, Product, Experience, Engineering, and Data & AI—enables us to partner with insurance organizations at every stage of their modernization journey, from initial assessment to full-scale implementation and beyond. We bring together strategy, engineering, data, and experience design to deliver solutions that drive sustainable growth, regulatory confidence, and exceptional customer value.

Ready to accelerate your legacy modernization journey? Connect with Publicis Sapient to discover how our insurance-specific expertise can help your organization thrive in the digital age.