A leading U.S. life insurance company was transitioning off a previously shared mainframe system, for which they had assumed full operational costs.

Challenges

The transition provided an opportunity to address major data quality issues uncovered during the extraction of policy data from the mainframe to 15 proprietary and SaaS systems across claims, finance, and other operations. SaaS platforms included Duck Creek, SAP, and others.

Data quality issues from these extracts led to expensive manual processing and slow handling of insurance claims. For example, in the claims database, coverage information was often inaccurate, with incorrect limit amounts. In addition, significant extraction delays left the claims system data outdated.

Our solution

We were engaged for a two-year project to implement fast, automated loading of high-quality data into operational databases. Our team included an on-site Quality Engineering (QE) manager and nine offshore technical specialists.

Today, real-time data extracts are delivered to operational systems via JSON files, enhancing agility and responsiveness. We automate data validation testing using a Selenium open-source framework and automate API testing with ReadyAPI, managing all code repositories through GitHub. Furthermore, AI, using Microsoft Copilot, is being implemented to provide a summary of data validation failures.

Business outcome

We have completed about 25% of the project with significant results.

In the claims system, we identified and corrected 222 defects and enabled real-time data availability through 24/7 processing. Quality checks on extracted data, which previously took over a day to manually check, can now be completed in 90 seconds or less, thus ensuring every policy is checked.

The new environment brings operational efficiencies, including real-time endorsement processing, processing multiple endorsements on the same day, and real-time payments processing. Moreover, one set of insurance rules and edits, easier migration of modifications, and cloud-based platform efficiencies have made maintenance significantly easier.

Our insurance industry-focused solution helps the business achieve their most critical goal. For example, when an insurance claim is filed, the agents using the new environment have immediate access to correct coverage information.  This greatly improves productivity, reduces costs, and significantly speeds up the handling of insurance claims — serving the customers well.