Why Hitching your Wagon to Guidewire or Duck Creek might not be your best option when modernizing the policy admin system for your P&C organization.

One more long flight, One more write up.

Gather ’round, fellow insurance tech warriors. Pull up a chair, and let me spin you a yarn about modernizing policy admin systems. Well if it sounded little Victorian, the intension was to be dramatic. Spoiler alert: It’s not always about buying the latest shiny toy from Guidewire or Duck Creek. Sometimes, you gotta build your own damn rocket ship.

Yeah !!! I heard some of you yelling  “ Blasphemy!!!” Well, hear me out. I am not “punch card day” old, but have seen my mainframe quite a bit, romanticizing COBOL, CICS, DB2 to be some avengers of modern day tech superheroes. So, when I say “modernize from scratch,” I’m not just being edgy. I’m being practical. And, frankly, a little cheeky.

The Myth of the “Magic Vendor”

Buying Guidewire or Duck Creek is kinda like buying a luxury car—you get a shiny dashboard and a fancy GPS. But sometimes, you forget the fuel costs, the maintenance, and the occasional “check engine” light that won’t go away for months. And guess what? You don’t even get to customize the horn sound. It will be like leaving with my Audi A6 with the engine light on for 6 years without knowing why it is lit and counting my blessings that it does not give up in middle of highway.

These platforms come with licensing fees that could fund a small moon mission. And once you sign up, you’re basically stuck in a long-term relationship with their upgrade schedule. Think of it like a never-ending subscription to a gym you never use—but with way more spreadsheets and less cardio.

 Mainframe? More Like MainFame

Don’t diss the mainframe just yet. That old beast might not be winning any beauty contests, but it’s like your grumpy grandpa who’s seen wars, recessions, and at least three Y2K scares — yet still shows up every day to get the job done. All those decades of business logic, underwriting quirks, and sacred rituals are gold. Tossing them out for a canned platform? That’s like trading your family recipe for instant ramen. Sure, quick, but where’s the flavor?

Big Bang Migrations: The Fireworks You Don’t Want

The classic modernization tale goes: “We’ll flip the switch overnight and everything will be perfect!” Except, it never is. Usually it’s more like fireworks… but the kind that set the whole server room on fire.

Guidewire and Duck Creek projects are famous for taking forever — often measured in “insurance dog years” (that’s like 7 calendar years for every one in tech). Meanwhile, your business evolves, your competitors adapt, and you’re stuck waiting for “go-live” like it’s the last season of your favorite show.

Build Your Own Spaceship, Captain!

Refactoring from scratch means you get to be the captain of your own starship. Want to add AI-driven underwriting? Boom, plug it in. Want telematics-powered pay-how-you-drive rates? No problem. The secret sauce? Build on a modern, flexible architecture with microservices, APIs, and event-driven awesomeness.

You get freedom. You get agility. You get to brag at parties about how your legacy system is now a “cloud-native, scalable powerhouse” — instead of just “that old COBOL thing.”

The Hidden Technical Debt of New Kids on the Block

New platforms don’t come debt-free. Oh no. Guidewire and Duck Creek have their own quirks and “features” that feel like they were designed during a coffee shortage. You’ll discover layers of complexity and proprietary magic that make you scratch your head wondering if you’ve just traded one cryptic language for another.

Building your own system? At least you know what you’re building (or breaking). You control the code, the fixes, and the future.

 To end it all, nothing would be more befitting without an ode to the old mainframe(fame)..... :-)

Why did the COBOL developer stay calm during the upgrade? Because he knew mainframes never crash—they just take long naps!

#policyadmin #modernization #Guidewire #BuyVsBuild #LegacyRefactoring #AWS