Insurance Company Modernizes 30-Year-Old Core Systems

A regional insurance provider was running critical policy administration on a 30-year-old mainframe system. COBOL developers were retiring, maintenance costs were escalating, and the rigid architecture made it nearly impossible to launch new products or respond to regulatory changes quickly.

ELMET designed a modernization program using the strangler fig pattern—gradually replacing legacy functionality with modern services while maintaining continuous operations. This approach eliminated the risk of a big-bang cutover while delivering value incrementally.

The first phase focused on customer-facing capabilities. A modern API layer and web portal were built in front of the legacy system, immediately improving customer experience while the backend remained unchanged. This delivered quick wins that built organizational confidence.

Core policy administration was then decomposed into microservices running on Kubernetes. Each service was developed, tested, and deployed independently, with traffic gradually shifted from legacy to modern systems. The mainframe served as system of record until each capability was fully validated.

Data migration was handled incrementally. As each microservice went live, its data was migrated and validated. Comprehensive reconciliation processes ensured data integrity throughout the multi-year program.

The transformation delivered dramatic results. New products that previously took 12-18 months to launch now go live in 2-3 months. Maintenance costs dropped 60% as mainframe workload decreased. Processing that took hours now completes in minutes. Most importantly, the business never experienced disruption throughout the transformation.