Let’s be honest. A lot of what’s being sold today as “cloud-based” or “modern core systems” for insurers today is just old technology in new packaging. If your platform needs regular version upgrades, can’t scale without weeks of prep, or still needs hardcoded integrations, it’s not modern. It’s just old with some shiny band-aids.
If you’re still on one of those systems, you’re not just behind on technology, you’re bleeding money on architecture that can’t keep up.
The Problem with So-Called “Cloud” Platforms
The industry jumped from mainframes to client-server, then to early web platforms, and a lot of insurers stopped there. Some providers might’ve migrated those older systems to the cloud and slapped on the “cloud-based” label, but the truth is that simply hosting something in the cloud doesn’t make it cloud-native.
Cloud-native systems are built to take full advantage of what the cloud actually offers: things like elastic scalability, minimized downtime through redundancy and failover mechanisms, rapid deployment cycles, and modular upgrades. Early systems simply weren’t built to scale automatically, to run event-driven workflows, or to deliver updates without downtime. They’re not designed for real-time anything.
They can’t keep up with today’s expectations—personalized experiences, seamless integrations, continuous product changes, straight-through processing. And they’re definitely not ready for what’s next.
Unfortunately, they’re still pretty standard in the insurance industry, but that is changing.
What a Core System Should Look Like With Today’s Technology
Real cloud-native platforms don’t just have the capability sit on AWS or Azure. It’s much more than that. They’re built using modern architecture principles like:
- Microservices: Update or deploy one capability without touching everything else.
- API-first: Integrate with anything, without the IT pain.
- Headless UX: Build digital experiences the way your customers want them.
- Elastic scalability: Stop planning for capacity. Let the system scale itself.
- Event-driven architecture: React instantly to changes in data and user behavior—without relying on nightly batch jobs.
- Continuous deployment and CI/CD pipelines: Deliver updates without disrupting the business or waiting for monolithic release cycles.
- Modular services: Swap out, extend, or enhance individual parts of your platform without rewriting the entire system.
- Well-architected for resilience and observability: Built for uptime, transparency, and real-time performance monitoring.
- Security-first design: Includes built-in identity, access management, encryption, and threat monitoring from the start—not bolted on later. itself.
EIS OneSuite™ checks all those boxes. It’s designed from the ground up to be modular, flexible, and future-proof. It doesn’t just play well with your tech stack—it is the tech stack.
All That is Good to Know.. But How do You to Spot the Imposters?
Here’s a quick test:
- Can you independently scale different services without downtime?
- Can the system integrate with third-party ecosystems in real time using open APIs?
- Do upgrades happen continuously in the background, or do they require planned outages?
- Does your platform offer elasticity, so it can auto-scale during peak demand?
- Can you deploy features incrementally, or does everything have to ship as a massive release?
- Does the system support modular component reuse across lines of business?
- Is security embedded into the system from the ground up with real-time monitoring?
If you’re seeing “no” to any of those, chances are your system is only cloud-hosted, not cloud-native. You’re stuck maintaining complexity while losing flexibility, speed, and future-readiness.
To see a complete side-by-side chart comparing key capabilities of cloud-native vs. outdated systems—drawn from real-world insurance tech evaluation—check out pages 20–23 of our whitepaper Ditch the Dead Weight: The Case for Cloud-Native Core Systems That Actually Deliver.
Don’t Modernize Around a Broken Core
Insurers need more than surface-level improvements. Agility, speed, and customer experience all start with the core platform. But if that foundation is clunky, brittle, or built for another era, every digital investment around it is compromised.
Too many carriers are running mission-critical operations on outdated platforms that were never designed for today’s expectations. If your system can’t adapt quickly, integrate openly, or scale dynamically, it doesn’t matter how many add-ons or workarounds you stack on top of it—you’re still limited by the foundation.
It’s time to stop patching and start rethinking. The technology that runs your business should be built for what’s ahead, not stuck in what was.
For a practical guide to evaluating whether your core system is truly cloud-native or just cloud-washed, read our whitepaper Ditch the Dead Weight: The Case for Cloud-Native Core Systems That Actually Deliver.
