Modernize Insurance with Real-Time Data Streaming—Without Replacing Core Systems All at Once

Insurers are under pressure from every direction. Policyholders expect seamless digital service, faster claims decisions and responsive support across channels. Regulators expect stronger control, transparency and resilience. Meanwhile, many carriers are still working around legacy policy, billing and claims systems that were never designed for today’s always-on expectations.

The challenge is not simply to modernize. It is to modernize in a way that protects continuity, supports compliance and creates room for innovation without forcing a risky, all-at-once core replacement. That is where Speed Layer helps.

Speed Layer is Publicis Sapient’s resilient, scalable data streaming platform designed to unlock data from legacy systems and make it available in near real time through microservices and APIs. By decoupling digital experiences from core systems of record, insurers can improve service availability, accelerate claims and fraud use cases, and create a stronger foundation for digital transformation.

Insurance organizations often operate across complex estates shaped by years of product growth, acquisitions and market change. That can leave critical data fragmented across policy administration, claims, billing, servicing and partner platforms. As digital demand rises, those dependencies make it harder to move quickly, harder to create joined-up experiences and harder to respond when demand spikes or back-end systems are under strain.

At the same time, insurance transformation cannot come at the expense of trust. Carriers need digital foundations that support regulatory requirements, secure data access and strong governance while still helping teams launch better experiences faster. In this environment, the most effective strategy is often not a full reset. It is purposeful coexistence: enabling customer-facing and operational capabilities to move at digital speed while core platforms continue to evolve at the right pace for risk, governance and business continuity.

Speed Layer acts as a near real-time cache built on a modern technology stack. It captures changes from legacy systems of record using change data capture and streaming technologies, structures that data for consumption and makes it available to downstream applications through microservices and APIs.

That means insurers can give web portals, mobile apps, agent experiences, service channels and operational tools faster, standardized access to critical information without forcing every interaction to read directly from legacy platforms. The result is a more resilient digital architecture that reduces bottlenecks, offloads read workloads from core systems and creates a repeatable way to build and scale new services.

Speed Layer is designed to deliver 99.99% availability and millisecond-level read performance. It also supports quicker product development by making access to data sets and interfaces easier to repeat without disturbing systems of record. Using industry-standard open-source technologies, it can also help reduce infrastructure costs while extending the value of legacy investments.

For insurers, real-time data streaming is not just an architectural improvement. It changes how the business performs.

Customer and broker journeys no longer need to be tightly coupled to the volatility of legacy back ends. By decoupling channels from core systems, insurers can keep critical services available during scheduled maintenance, incidents or demand spikes. That matters when policyholders need to submit claims, check status, update details or access documents without disruption.

Claims responsiveness depends on timely access to trusted data across systems. A modern streaming layer helps claims teams and digital channels work from up-to-date information, improving handoffs and reducing delays caused by fragmented back-end access. This creates a stronger foundation for quicker servicing, better status visibility and more efficient operations.

Speed Layer is an enabler for innovation through event stream processing and data enrichment. That opens the door to stronger fraud monitoring and faster detection patterns by making relevant data available in near real time. In insurance, where suspicious activity can emerge across claims, payments and servicing interactions, that speed matters.

Standardized data access through APIs and microservices makes it easier to serve consistent information across digital channels and assisted journeys. Insurers can create more connected experiences across self-service, contact centers and intermediary channels while reducing the friction that comes from inconsistent or slow-moving data.

Offloading read workloads from expensive legacy systems reduces pressure on core platforms and can lower infrastructure costs. Teams also gain a more reusable integration model for future services, reducing the time and complexity involved in launching new capabilities.

One of the biggest advantages of Speed Layer is that it supports modernization without requiring insurers to replace their core systems first. Publicis Sapient helps organizations take an incremental approach, using modern data layers, APIs, cloud-native patterns and event-driven architectures to create value sooner while reducing risk.

This approach supports a two-speed operating model. Customer-facing and innovation-led capabilities can evolve rapidly, while policy, billing and claims systems continue to change on a more controlled timetable. That makes modernization more practical for regulated organizations that need to balance pace with resilience.

It also creates better conditions for continuous improvement. Once data access is standardized and decoupled from legacy constraints, insurers can more easily add new journeys, automate servicing tasks, enrich data flows and build new products or experiences on reusable foundations.

In insurance, modernization must support more than speed. It must strengthen governance. Publicis Sapient’s approach embeds security-first controls, automation and repeatable engineering patterns that help regulated organizations modernize with confidence. Speed Layer supports stronger data governance through structured, standardized access patterns and can be integrated into broader cloud-native environments designed for auditability, consistency and operational control.

That matters for carriers navigating privacy obligations, reporting requirements and the broader need to demonstrate operational resilience. Modern architecture should make compliance easier to manage, not harder.

Speed Layer has already shown what a modern data layer can achieve in financial services: 7-millisecond microservice response times, more than 95% automated test coverage, around 300 million records loaded with real-time streaming before launch, daily reconciliation of those records in less than 45 minutes and about £4 million in infrastructure cost savings. More broadly, the platform is designed to deliver 99.99% availability and support future innovation through real-time notifications, fraud monitoring, personalized products and event-driven services.

For insurers, the relevance is clear. The same architectural principles can help create resilient digital services, faster claims responsiveness, better fraud monitoring and stronger operational efficiency—without waiting for a full core replacement to unlock value.

The future of insurance will be shaped by carriers that can combine resilience with responsiveness. That means building digital services that stay available, making trusted data accessible in near real time and creating architectures that allow innovation to move faster than legacy change cycles.

Speed Layer helps insurers do exactly that. By unlocking data from core systems, standardizing access through APIs and microservices, and supporting event-driven innovation, it gives carriers a practical path to modernization—one that improves policyholder experience, strengthens claims and fraud operations, supports compliance and drives efficiency across the enterprise.

Modernization does not have to begin with ripping out the core. It can begin with making data work harder, services more resilient and innovation easier to scale. With Speed Layer, insurers can build that foundation now.

Relevant Links

• Speed Layer for Nationwide Building Society
• Speed Layer for Nationwide Building Society
• How modern data foundations turn inclusive lending into a scalable growth engine
• Cloud modernization for always-on financial services
• Resiliency Engineering in Financial Services: A Playbook for Modernizing Without Compromising Trust
• Moderniser la banque de détail en France : résilience, rapidité et innovation sans rompre avec le cœur du système (Europe)
• Resiliencia digital para la banca en México: cómo modernizar sin poner en riesgo la continuidad (LATAM)
• FAQ (FAQ)
• 12 Things Buyers Should Know About Publicis Sapient’s Work With Nationwide Building Society (LIST)