Why sensible insurers are modernizing their mainframe now | Insurance coverage Weblog

In a market that calls on insurers to be agile and digitize at scale, an insurer’s mainframe can both catalyze or inhibit progress. Whereas the mainframe was as soon as a helpful core technological operate, many legacy mainframes lack the agility to satisfy the calls for of buyer expectations and speedy digital progress.

The decision for mainframe modernization

Insurers need to attain a digital end-state and embed the enabling features they should carry out within the cloud utilizing a route that’s sooner, higher, and cheaper. Modernizing the mainframe is the final mile in direction of enabling enterprise capabilities, reimagining the enterprise and driving a cloud working mannequin.

If we take a look at the market forces shaping the broader business, insurers are being known as upon to be extra agile in order to maintain tempo with quickly altering calls for. This is because of a variety of things, from increased inflationary surroundings bills for insurance coverage operations and rising claims, to the impression of the worldwide pandemic and predicted recession. With a high-interest fee surroundings and future predicted volatility, prices want to come back down, and one of many prices that’s rising 12 months over 12 months is upkeep of the mainframe.

Zooming in on sectors inside insurance coverage, this want for agility is manifested in numerous methods. Property and Casualty (P&C) insurers not solely should be extra agile, however have to give attention to advertising and marketing factors of differentiation whereas commoditizing non-differentiators. The Life & Annuity (L&A) and Retirement business will profit from unlocking distribution, a feat which is presently not potential as a result of plenty of that logic is embedded within the mainframe. Subsequently, the main focus is on modernizing the mainframe to allow digital channels. Group and Retirement insurers are present process a compressed transformation – which means that the sector requires reimagined operations from the bottom up with the intention to enhance buyer relationships and acquire a aggressive benefit – with Group hurting on margins, and Retirement hurting on margins and scale. Lastly, Group and Well being insurers are being challenged to drive down the associated fee foundation, and drive progress, for instance, by including a wellness layer to their providing.

From a value perspective, the case for mainframe modernization is evident.  The demand positioned on the insurance coverage infrastructure is rising, with enterprise functionality wants driving up Million-Directions-Per-Second (MIPS) utilization and value. A legacy mainframe additionally has an impression on expertise, as devoted workers shall be required to supply upkeep and maintenance – a diminishing skillset as an increasing number of senior workers retire from the workforce. Down the road, this manifests as a substantial enterprise threat.

Modernizing the mainframe isn’t just about general agility, however securing a basis for necessary technological transformation. In a latest report on Transforming Claims and Underwriting with AI, Accenture illustrates with widespread industry research that AI has emerged as the transformative technology and critical differentiator in the insurance industry when applied in tandem with humans. However, AI transformation is not possible if an insurer has not dismantled and updated mainframe platforms first.

Modernizing the mainframe offers some compelling benefits. By running in a less expensive environment, operating costs are drastically lowered, and the use of a more modern platform dramatically reduces platform resource costs. Together, this can result in a 40 percent reduction in operating expenses. While this savings is significant, it is not the only benefit. Most importantly, mainframe modernization – through agility, flexibility and access to critical mainframe data – has a powerful impact on business value. As a recent Accenture blog, Mainframes: The last frontier of cloud migration emphasizes, clients are in a position to leverage their mainframe information, which might comprise a long time of enterprise transactions, and use that information to feed analytics or machine studying initiatives that may ship aggressive benefit. The weblog put up additionally illustrates the necessary position the modernization of the mainframe performs in closing the abilities hole – it could actually counter the issue many corporations are going through as their mainframe consultants attain retirement age and also can appeal to new expertise curious about modernizing core enterprise workloads.

Modernization additionally gives the power to deploy new options, merchandise and capabilities a lot faster and along with interoperable purposes, guarantees as much as 5 occasions deployment speeds. New enterprise capabilities comparable to the power to include AI and ML, real-time decision-making and information processing effectivity are additionally unlocked. These advantages may be led to by conservative changes, or a whole system transformation. All of it depends upon the strategic and progress priorities of the insurance coverage enterprise.

New platforms and migration applied sciences permit for compressed transformations

Mainframe modernization isn’t a one-size-fits-all proposition. It’s pushed by the distinctive market wants of the insurer and the strategic intent of the enterprise. There’s a broad spectrum of selections obtainable to modernize at a tempo that’s comfy and mandatory for the insurer. Right this moment’s mainframe migration know-how helps this, permitting for automated, quick, and low-cost migration to the cloud. This know-how consists of SaaS options, Cloud maturity and advances in migration applied sciences.

By way of approaches, insurers can roll out the next interventions, which all range in scale and depth:

• Re-platform: Migrating an utility with out altering the programming language to a different platform / Working System
• Re-factor: Harnessing Accenture’s language migration toolkit to remodel from legacy to fashionable programming language code, utilizing (semi) automated tooling to mitigate threat referring to legacy abilities, improve agility and cut back prices
• Substitute: Figuring out a managed service/utility that may present required performance, together with extracting and migrating information to a brand new system to scale back complexity and prices
• Reimagine: Reimagining the enterprise totally with rewritten and rationalized purposes

How insurance coverage corporations can start their mainframe modernization journey

There are nuances to how mainframe modernization is utilized inside insurance coverage. These options differ in depth from enterprise advantages to the know-how used. The appliance depends upon whether or not the insurer focuses on life and annuities, group and well being, retirement, private traces/small business and huge business. Nonetheless, there are three key steps that decide the route of each mainframe modernization journey:

1. Defining enterprise priorities
   1. a. What are the best priorities for the enterprise?
   2. b. How do these align to the important thing issues attributable to working on the mainframe?

2. Figuring out funds constraints
   1. a. What’s the funds obtainable at present?
   2. b. What’s the length obtainable to appreciate ROI?

3. Figuring out capability for transformation
   1. a. What’s the IT staff’s capability for transformation?
   2. b. Are there sources obtainable?
   3. c. Is there plenty of different change taking place?

Following this course of ends in a singular mainframe modernization plan.

Accenture’s insurance coverage mainframe modernization methodology will provide help to develop a journey aligned along with your objectives. Contact us to get began.

Gas the way forward for insurance coverage: Know-how modernization, comparable to AI and cloud-fueled information analytics, helps insurers ship worthwhile progress each by way of rising revenues and chopping prices.

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