Configurability: The New Standard for Modern Policy Administration Systems

A Policy Administration System is the operational heart of an insurer, shaping how products are designed, underwriting is guided, and policies are serviced. Consequently, its ability to handle change has become a primary evaluation factor. Recent industry analysis, including Celent's 2025 Policy Administration System Customer Feedback Survey (slide 16) research, highlights this shift. Insurers are moving beyond static feature lists to scrutinise how effectively a PAS can support frequent updates in a safe, controlled, and auditable manner.

 

The core expectation is no longer just about what a Policy Administration System can do today, but how easily it can be adapted for tomorrow. This is a direct response to the failings of Legacy Systems, which are often characterised by brittle, custom code, siloed data, and technical debt. These outdated platforms make even minor adjustments to products, rules, or workflows a high-risk, resource-intensive project.

Today’s insurers demand a system that allows for rapid adjustments while maintaining structural integrity, consistency, and control. Key attributes such as governance, auditability, and predictable deployments have become non-negotiable, ensuring the platform can evolve without compromising stability.

The heightened expectations for Policy Administration Systems directly reflect the mounting pressures on the insurance industry. This isn't a change for technology's sake; it's a strategic response to fundamental shifts in the market.

First, the pace of regulatory change has accelerated dramatically. New regulatory requirements arrive more frequently, demanding precise updates to rules, documentation, and underlying policy data. A delayed or incorrect implementation can lead to significant financial penalties and reputational damage.

Second, customer expectations have been fully shaped by digital leaders in other industries. Policyholders now expect personalized products, seamless digital interactions, and faster service. This requires a level of flexibility that legacy systems simply cannot provide. Insurers must leverage customer data to tailor offerings, a core tenet of any successful digital transformation initiative.

Finally, the competitive landscape is intensifying. Agile competitors with strong digital operations can launch new products in weeks rather than months, putting significant pressure on established carriers. To compete, insurers must accelerate their own product development and adapt to new market trends with unprecedented speed. These forces are compelling insurers to adopt approaches that reduce developer dependency, foster  business–IT collaboration, and make change a predictable, low-risk activity.

 

Configurability is the architectural foundation that enables a modern PAS to meet these new demands. Unlike customisation, which involves writing unique code that is expensive to maintain and upgrade, configuration relies on pre-built tools and frameworks to define products, rules, and processes. When a system defines its core logic through configuration, it becomes inherently more predictable, transparent, and agile.

This architectural choice has profound implications across the insurance value chain. It allows for the creation of reusable product components, ensuring that changes can be made without destabilising the entire platform. This structural integrity directly accelerates policy issuance and is a prerequisite for achieving true straight-through processing. By enabling business users and analysts to visually map out processes, workflow automation becomes a practical reality rather than a complex coding project.

Modern configurable systems are built on API-first and component-based architectures. This not only makes them easier to evolve but also ensures that every update can be versioned, audited, and deployed in a controlled manner. In essence, configurability provides the framework for continuous and safe change without compromising the stability of the core system.

 

 

Key capabilities are designed to empower business users:

Governance is the bedrock of stable and compliant PAS operations. Configurability fundamentally enhances governance by creating a predictable and transparent model for managing change. Instead of opaque code modifications, configuration assets can be versioned, reviewed by business stakeholders, and deployed in controlled cycles.

 

This structured approach holds several governance benefits. Effective-dating allows for future changes to be prepared and activated on a specific date, avoiding unintended impacts on in-force policies. Comprehensive audit trails ensure that every update to policy data or business logic can be traced back to its origin, user, and time of change.

 

This level of control dramatically reduces maintenance risks and simplifies platform upgrades. It empowers IT teams to maintain ownership of release quality while enabling business teams to contribute safely to routine changes, fostering a collaborative and secure operational environment. 

 

Regulatory compliance requirements are a constant and growing challenge for insurers. Regulators across global and European markets are introducing new rules, disclosure mandates, and pricing constraints at an unprecedented pace. For a PAS that is heavily dependent on hard-coded logic, each of these updates can balloon into a costly and time-consuming development project, introducing significant risk.

Configurability transforms compliance from a development bottleneck into a manageable business process. When critical elements like data fields, business rules, questionnaires, and workflows can be updated through configuration, insurers can respond to new mandates with far greater speed and certainty.

This empowers compliance teams and business analysts to collaborate directly on refining logic, adding new information fields, or enforcing specific validation steps without a lengthy IT development cycle. A configurable PAS becomes a strategic asset for proactive compliance management, ensuring the organisation can adapt to the changing regulatory landscape efficiently and accurately.

True self-sufficiency is one of the most powerful outcomes of a configuration-first PAS. The ability for an insurer to manage its own products, rules, and workflows without constant reliance on the vendor for every adjustment is a game-changer. When changes are handled through configuration, internal teams are empowered to take ownership of their own timelines and priorities.

 

This independence delivers immediate benefits. It helps keep down costs, as many updates remain within business and IT teams instead of becoming external development projects. It accelerates speed-to-market and improves responsiveness, directly enhancing customer service. When the teams closest to the policyholder can make necessary updates (from concept to testing) quickly, the overall customer experience is enhanced.

This model fosters a healthier, more strategic partnership with the vendor. The vendor can focus on core platform evolution and complex enhancements, while the insurer takes ownership of the day-to-day configuration that drives its unique business strategy. This balance allows organisations to respond to changing needs with confidence and agility. 

Adopting a configuration-first model has a profound strategic impact that extends across the C-suite, transforming how an insurer operates and competes.

For Chief Operating Officers (COOs) and Chief Product Officers (CPOs), configurability directly accelerates time to market, continuous product improvement, and more accurate rule management. It streamlines the entire value chain, from underwriting and Risk Analysis to claims management and Claims Processing, reducing operational friction and shortening change cycles. This agility is crucial for delivering exceptional customer experiences that build loyalty.

For Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and enterprise architects, configurability minimizes the accumulation of custom code, which in turn simplifies upgrades, improves system stability, and lowers total cost of ownership. It provides a controlled, auditable, and future-proof framework to support business-driven change.

When change becomes faster, safer, and easier to manage, insurers can move away from a model of occasional, disruptive upgrades to one of continuous evolution. This capability allows them to respond to market or regulatory needs with full confidence in every update.

 

The evolution of PAS configuration is set to accelerate with the integration of emerging technologies. While no-code / low-code workflows have already accelerated configuration, the next frontier is intelligent assistance powered by generative AI. This technology can take a high-level product definition and translate it into a working configuration far more quickly than manual processes.

One example of this direction is an AI Copilot concept, where large language models assist with the initial setup of insurance products and processes. An AI solution could interpret a product specification document and generate a baseline configuration for rules, workflows, and data models. Human configurators would then review, refine, and validate this output.

In this model, people remain entirely in control while AI handles the routine and repetitive work. This synergy has the potential to shorten configuration cycles significantly, further  democratise product creation, and make PAS setup more intuitive for both business and IT teams. As machine learning and IoT technologies become more prevalent, a configurable core will be essential to integrate the data and insights they generate.

Configurability is no longer an optional feature; it has become the fundamental operating model for modern Policy Administration Systems. It is the synthesis of speed, control, and self-sufficiency, enabling insurers to evolve their business continuously rather than in slow, high-risk increments. By breaking free from the constraints of hard-coded Legacy Systems, insurers can innovate faster, respond to regulations with agility, and deliver the personalized experiences that today's customers demand.

Artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies are starting to help with the configuration process.  This will accelerate the shift toward more flexible, smart, and business-focused platforms. Insurers that embrace a configuration-first strategy today are not just solving current challenges; they are building a resilient and agile foundation to thrive in the uncertain and opportunity-rich future of insurance.