As organisations confront legacy infrastructure, rapid AI advancements, and shifting cultural dynamics, the true challenge of digital transformation lies not in technology alone—but in aligning strategy, systems and people at the edge of change.

What has been the most significant internal barrier your organisation has faced in moving from legacy systems to more agile, digital ecosystems?

“We are often moving insurers away from legacy or modern legacy systems (systems typically installed from 2012 – present). It is what we do day-to-day, and, as a result, we see a lot of the issues of transformation head on.

“The barriers are varied, but the two that stand out the most are poor frames for reimagined business models and legacy mindsets.

“All too often the vision statements and corporate strategies call for ambitious change, but when it hits the procurement process much of that ambition gets lost in a system replacement mindset – a process that seeks to buy new technology that replicates the way the insurers work today, rather than transforming them for tomorrow.

“This feature-function and process obsession comes from a good place. People are trying to protect what they know, and keep control of it, in the hope of continuing to provide a somewhat improved service to customers.

“The reality is the technology market typically responds in the same way. Most still provide solutions that scale existing problems, as opposed to creating new value, through new technologies, in a new working model.

“In insurance, the reality is policy administration systems need to give way to customer success platforms. Platforms where the insurer is built around their customers, with data fluid and event streaming capabilities. Platforms that are born native to the cloud, and provide true adaptivity through microservices and open architectures, allowing insurers to build new propositions and customer experiences.

“Making insurers look like customer-centric eCommerce businesses requires an enterprise design change alongside it. It is a fundamental change where teams work tirelessly on turning insights into outcomes, in cross functional teams, and are freed from the IT barriers that currently constrain them.”

How do you assess whether to modernise, replace, or integrate legacy infrastructure when undertaking digital transformation?

“This is an important question. When we say legacy we typically also mean reliable, contained and relatively cheap to run technologies. These can have their place. Sometimes simple ledger functions can benefit from new core technologies, but remain as they are.

“Assessing the usefulness of legacy technology in the context of digital transformation should be achieved through the lens of the business’s ambition. The key question is, can that ambition and vision for the transformed business be delivered through the legacy infrastructure or will it require new technologies to align with and empower it?

“If your idea of transformation is achieving efficiency gains for your current ways of working, then replacing your current platform with something a bit more modern may be the best fit. However, if you want to truly transform the way you work and enjoy the new value that a new operational mindset can deliver, you will almost certainly need to leverage new technologies to do so.

“The more challenging topic in bridging the gap between legacy technologies and new platforms is two-fold. Firstly, migrating your customers and all the required data to your target state system. Taking advantage of modern technologies and data transference practices, EIS has recently broken the mould in the UK by completing a successful mid-term migration for a home insurance book with esure.

“The second is the two-tier operational phase, where minimum viable platform approaches mean that not all of an insurance book, or all products, or all customers are in the target state system. This means there’s two sets of IT operational costs, and two ecosystems to manage which stresses the organisation and the IT budget.

“The way around this is to super-charge your transformation as much as possible. Easier said than done. This is heart transplantation surgery, where you are installing a cyber-heart capable of far better performance, but also needs to be wired into the whole body. Choosing your surgeons (implementation partners) and the equipment they use is vital to success.”

Where has AI accelerated your reinvention efforts—and where has it introduced new layers of complexity or resistance?

“There’s three key layers to new AI technologies in this context.

“There’s the AI tools that help you run and change the new system. There’s AI tools that assist the implementation, and there are AI tools that help make intelligent outcomes happen in the context of the customer or employee experience.

“We have GenAI tools that can now assist and automate things like census intakes. We have GenAI that can guide development or configuration on the platform, and we have clients using GenAI to shape call-centre agents scripts on the fly making transition between digital experiences and vital human-to-human interactions seamless and empathetic.

“The list of use-cases is endless, but in customer value creation there’s some vital principles that we need to be guided by. The key for insurers now is an operational data model that centres on a customer ID as opposed to a policy ID that a customer is appended to. This is because the AI use cases ultimately shape experiences. Wiring via the policy limits use cases, and obliterates opportunities for extending customer relationship models that enable insurers to sell more or provide more adaptive usage based and intelligent products, e.g. usage-based car insurance and intelligent homes.”

How do you ensure that digital reinvention is not just a technology upgrade, but a cultural and strategic shift across the business?

“For EIS this is a crucial question, and I’d argue, the most important criteria for success. Simply doing what you do today but in better technology would constitute a failed outcome.

“If you are simply looking to minimise costs and maximise distribution, I’d argue that transformation to a modern core technology is not the right answer anyway. New MACH based coretechs, like EIS essentially remap business models. They make silos in insurers disappear, where teams move things like underwriting a risk differently to putting it into the hand of a customer in sprints.

“This means the transformation needs to have two key characteristic outcomes. One, that data is mined like a perishable asset for insight and acted on as near to real-time as possible. The other is that teams work in cross-functional models akin to software engineering-based businesses.”

Can you describe a pivotal moment when your digital reinvention strategy had to shift course—and what prompted that decision?

“Most insurers will need to go through a hundred micro-pivots on their transformation journey, and that’s okay. It’s kind of the goal – that the insurers become more adaptive and capable of learning fast and acting on that learning.

“A lot of insurers move their core operations first and then pivot their data model and the way they derive product changes, services and experiences. This is often managed as two-stages in transformation planning, but the pivot we see is also more self-sufficient and more expansive ecosystem development. Integrating with far more partners to value than originally intended.”

How are you measuring success when the outcomes of transformation are often fluid, iterative, and long-term?

The key transformation outcomes we are looking for are fundamental operational changes.

• A new operating mandate
  Digital customer experience leaders, like Apple and Amazon, have set customer expectations by satisfying multiple customer needs in one place, building affinity, then owning the relationship. These customer expectations are at the heart of the opportunity, and they are forcing insurers to rethink their product-centric pasts and satisfy customers’ ever-changing needs at scale. Metrics for success can be measured through customer sentiment, Net Promoter Scores, and the rate of customer complaints.
• Any insurance on one platform
  The proliferation of distribution channels plus the speed of change means you need an open ecosystem. EIS provides the only multiline platform to deliver any insurance product across risk, health, and wealth through any channel. Success is measured through huge centralised operational adaptivity, where best practices are shared across many domains within the insurer, and why we see things like product rationalisation becoming so important to success.
• Customer first
  To win your customer, you need to compete through experience. Transformation for insurers means being where their customers are in the way they need them to show up. This even includes creating new embedded & risk mitigating services into the core of the product offerings, from usage based car policies to integrated warehouses removing fire risks. The standard of the experience is being defined and set by the likes of Amazon, which captures the customer’s attention and provides a single place to solve multiple problems in their lives. 
• Client experience built in, not bolted on 
  EIS is built around a customer core. Embedding real customer-centricity into the heart of insurers’ operations — not just a CX veneer that sits on the surface. Successful transformations shift the operational data model so that this customer-centric approach allows them to orchestrate their customers and their partners to successful outcomes.
• Partnering your way to success
  The proliferation of distribution channels and the rate of technology change requires your insurance platform to join insurance ecosystems, connecting with the rapidly changing distribution channels of the future. Here success is measured in the ease, speed, and the cost of integration.
• Integrates beautifully
  EIS is built to operate within an ecosystem of partners, allowing for simple integration into other data sources, services, or technologies through a microservices architecture. Already more than 12,000 APIs. Success for insurers is their ability to adapt their ecosystems to competitive advantage. No one partnership will be orchestrated the same and the ability to make this process seamless and self-sufficient is essential to speed-to-market dynamics.
• Competitive change
  The rate of change has accelerated with new and agile market entrants, creating new business models and propositions. Resonating with the customer and meeting their expectations in new ways.  This requires new architectures that allow whole business models to be adapted and not just features & functions.
• Innovation acceleration 
  Your ability to innovate new insurance products from concept to rollout is measured in weeks, not months, because legacy technology barriers and complexity have been removed, reducing labour effort and cost.”

Looking ahead, what capabilities will define an organisation’s ability to thrive amid ongoing technological disruption?

“The defining competitive characteristic of the ambitious insurer is adaptivity – the ability to continuously respond and adapt to the competitive environment and their customers. The ability to harness new technologies like GenAI, and build multi-model, multi-supplier capability, while keeping control and acting responsibly. To ensure that, ultimately, any new technological disruption is actually an opportunity for competitive advantage by having the right operational capability to take advantage of them.

“Insurance is at a fundamental tipping point. Demographics are changing like never before making risk models obsolete. AI threatens to change everything including risk. Customer expectations were not met by the digital transformation efforts of insurers, and trust remains low.

“We need to see insurers move to completely different business models where everything is centred on the relationship with the customer and their ever-changing risks. And through this accumulating knowledge rapidly adapt to create new propositions fit for modern lives, communities and businesses.”

Rory Yates, Global Strategic Lead, EIS.

Rory Yates has more than 24 years of business leadership experience spanning client, agency, consultancy, start-up, and private equity roles. As EIS’ head of strategy for EMEA and APA, Rory helps insurers achieve their transformation goals and evolve toward ecosystem-based futures via insurance core systems transformation, including truly personalised engagement, taking innovation from concept to market quickly, and growing efficiently.