INSURANCE
Complete modernization of a 25-year-old policy management system while maintaining regulatory compliance and zero data loss.
A mid-market insurance carrier was running its entire policy management operation on a COBOL-based mainframe system built in 1998. The system managed 800K+ active policies and $2B in annual premiums — it was mission-critical and deeply embedded in every business process. The three remaining developers who understood the COBOL codebase were approaching retirement. New regulatory requirements demanded capabilities the mainframe couldn't support. The carrier had been told by two previous vendors that modernization would take 3+ years and cost $40M+.
Fleet Studio conducted a FRETA assessment that revealed the previous estimates were inflated because they assumed a full rewrite. Our analysis showed that 60% of the business logic could be extracted and re-implemented as modern services, while the remaining 40% (mostly batch processing and regulatory calculations) could be wrapped and migrated incrementally. We designed a 12-month phased approach that would deliver value at each stage.
Built a modern policy management platform on .NET Core with event-sourced architecture
Designed a data migration strategy that moved 25 years of policy data (800K+ records) with full audit trail preservation
Implemented a strangler fig pattern with an API gateway routing traffic between old and new systems
Created automated regulatory compliance testing that validated every policy calculation against the mainframe
Built a real-time data platform (Snowflake) that unified policy, claims, and actuarial data for the first time
Established parallel-run testing for 3 months before any traffic was cut over
Data loss across 800K+ policy records and 25 years of history
Infrastructure cost reduction ($8M annual savings)
Time to complete (vs. 36+ month estimates from competitors)
New product launch time (reduced from 6 months)
Actuarial analysis enabled for the first time via unified data platform
The assessment that determines what to rewrite vs. wrap is worth its weight in gold. A rigorous analysis showed we could modernize 60% while safely wrapping the rest — a completely different (and faster) approach than the previous estimates.
Every calculation in the new system was tested against the mainframe to ensure equivalence. This gave regulators, auditors, and the business confidence that no calculation logic was lost.
Running both systems simultaneously for 3 months, comparing results daily, proved the new system was production-ready. This de-risked the cutover and got buy-in from every stakeholder.
The business didn't know what it was missing until it had it. A unified data platform that tied together policy, claims, and actuarial data unlocked analytical capabilities that became a competitive advantage.
If you're running mission-critical systems on aging technology, a proper assessment can change everything. Let's discuss your modernization challenges, identify the optimal strategy (rewrite vs. wrap vs. migrate), and outline a path to a modern, efficient platform.