Benefits of losing your legacy system

What are legacy systems & why are they bad?

The term legacy system gets bandied about a lot. Exciting new insurtechs view any technology not created in the lasts 5 minutes as legacy. But that’s not the whole truth of it. A legacy system should describe any technology that consumes lots of time in processing workflows or general administration and is difficult to update. In the language of insurance, a legacy system is one that holds a broker back from finessing their existing products or launching new ones.

There’s actually some older tech out there that works very well and doesn’t really need to be updated. Legacy tech just describes systems that don’t work well, not systems that are old.

It should be easy enough to see why legacy systems are bad.

So why not change them?

Changing systems is perceived to be a major headache and business risk. This in itself is quite a dated view. Not only has technology improved in the last 10 years but so has project management and migration. The process of change is much easier than it is often thought to be.

Legacy systems, by their very definition, are holding businesses back. So changing them, and finding the bandwidth to change them, is critical. There are two key elements to consider:

1. What do you want from your new system?Answer this by considering where you’re held back at the moment, but also looking to see what is out there. Try to be led as much by what new systems are designed to do (and find one that fits your business) than moulding the system around what you want to achieve.
2. Data migrationData transfer is only as difficult as access to existing data makes it. The chief problem with data is not getting it into a new system, but getting it out of your old one. Even before you consider your new system, ensure you have good access to your existing data and do a data cleanse exercise to make sure you have key information such as email addresses for every record. Make this part of your client interaction scripts for a year beforehand to ensure you’re as ready as you can be.

Moving systems also doesn’t have to be a big bang approach. Pick a product or area that you want to change and do it gradually if that makes more sense.

What are the benefits of changing?

When you’ve implemented a new system to replace your legacy system you’ll have new challenges to focus on.

Your processes will be much more efficient and automated so staff that were engaged in admin will need to be repurposed and sometimes retrained. This can bring a renewed focus on quote-to-policy conversion to maximise marketing budget, or improved customer service. The end result will be better renewal retention and brand perception.

Your business development resource will also be freed up from BAU firefighting and can begin to look at new product lines and business expansion. Plan for this as part of your longer terms software strategy.

Replacing a legacy system is a daunting process but often easier than it first appears. If you’re being held back by tech then take advice from systems providers and start the transformation process.

2020 R&D Case Study

What is R&D?

Research & Development is the time and effort we put in to bettering our product, future-proofing and securing it, and responding to the needs of our present and future customers.

Why do we do R&D?

We do R&D continuously because the market never stays still, and no software is ever complete.

New technologies (everything from file formats to security protocols) and regulations (from GDPR to the CMA) and ideas (brokers are an innovative lot) demand that our systems are adaptable and future-proof.

An R&D project from 2020 – New Rating Engine

Every year we review and update our product roadmap which includes a significant investment of time and resource into developing products and features that will benefit our client base. In 2020, one of those major projects was to re-write our existing rating engine.

Problem we’re solving

Historically, we would use developers to translate an insurer’s rating algorithm into code, but this was time-consuming and therefore costly.

Instead we wanted something that would remove the need for developers in this process, in order to reduce the time and cost of rate builds and updates.

How we did it

Our clients (insurers and brokers and MGAs) tend to deliver rating guides to us in Excel. So we thought – let’s use Excel. Sadly Excel alone isn’t powerful enough to compute the 100,000s of quotes we have to process every day so we researched and developed a tool that would convert an Excel spreadsheet into code.

Using Open XML we now have the best of both worlds: our clients can make rate updates in Excel without needing to learn new configuration tools, and at Ignite, we don’t need any developer intervention to upload them to the system.

Our CTO worked closely on this project with other developers in both our Manchester and Mysore offices and with our BAs and Testers over a period of a few months.

Result – metrics/screenshot

The results of this project have been excellent. Our build time for new schemes has been reduced by over 50%.

Rate updates now take place without a code deployment and can be done in minutes.

For our clients, this means their rate updates are done at zero cost and within minutes.

R&D plans for 2021

• MI App
• OCR
• Next-best-step

Digital Readiness

What does it mean to ‘go digital’?

Going digital means giving your customers, staff, and management the widest possible array of online and data-enriched tools so they can achieve their aims in whatever suits them best.

How easy is it to achieve?

It’s not always easy. There are three major hurdles to clear:

1. Your own mindset – prioritise digital transformation above all other concerns. Growth, client retention, and staff satisfaction will all stem from this.
2. Your staff’s mindset – people are often resistant to change. Encouraging your staff to contribute and embrace change is a challenge in itself.
3. Your technology – investing in systems that enable digital transformation is often expensive and a journey into the unknown.

What’s the end goal?

The end goal is that your customers can interact with the product and business in the way that they want; that your staff enjoy the benefits of automation of repetitive tasks and seeing their own feedback implemented; that your company is able to make better, more informed decisions and quickly adopt new strategies, technologies, and products as they emerge.

Stages on the journey

1. Take a good look at your business, staff, processes, and clients. Be honest about what could be improved, where human intervention is necessary and where it’s not.
2. Prioritise the results of your review.
3. Assess the barriers to achieving each of the identified areas of improvement.
4. Create a strategy/roadmap for increasing your digital readiness.
5. Communicate this strategy to your staff and seek their feedback/input.
6. Be bold and implement the changes, no matter how seismic or costly in the short term!

How to get started

Every great journey begins with a first step.

Get your key staff and stakeholders together, and begin the process. Allocate time and regular feedback sessions.

If you’re not sure where to start or would like support in starting your digital journey, just get in touch, or you might like to take our digital readiness quiz to find out whether you’re ready to meet the digital demands of 2021 and beyond!