The Time to Migrate from Legacy Core Systems Is Now
In business, we often say “timing is everything”. With the rapid advancement of Assistive and Agentic AI, FINEOS is strategically positioned to realize the benefits of embedding AI in our purpose-built, modern core platform for the employee benefits and global life, accident, and health industries.
Embedding AI within our cloud-native FINEOS Platform powers both our end-to-end FINEOS AdminSuite (Quote-to-Claim) and FINEOS Absence (Integrated Disability and Absence Management (IDAM)). FINEOS clients already enjoy a significant competitive advantage over carriers still dependent on legacy core systems weighed down by technical debt, or those trying to adapt platforms originally built for P&C, pensions, or other domains.
Built for Speed, Compliance, and Product Flexibility
FINEOS clients are scaling quickly by migrating from legacy systems to FINEOS AdminSuite, which includes embedded workflows, industry practices and regulatory compliance, all finely tuned to enable modern, flexible products that support employees and their families through life’s key moments like never before.
The FINEOS Platform offers deep functional support for group, voluntary, and individual life, accident, and health products, all within a single core system. For group carriers, it includes a major competitive advantage: the most comprehensive, integrated leave management technology on the market, FINEOS Absence. Integrated absence management is now table stakes for carriers seeking to deliver a comprehensive benefits experience to employers.
Embedded AI Designed for Real Business Performance
FINEOS AI improves business performance through responsible automation and user empowerment, surfacing intelligence and insights drawn directly from within the platform. Yet, despite the clear advantages, a challenge we often see is adoption. This challenge isn’t unique to AI, it’s a long-standing issue in insurance and many other industries: the human tendency to resist change. In a compliance-driven environment, users must trust technology 100% before fully relying upon it. This means AI, no matter how powerful, must be introduced in a way that’s thoughtful, transparent, and aligned with operational realities.
The Change Management Challenge
Effective change management is essential when introducing a new core system, yet it’s frequently underestimated. It requires clear vision, a compelling sense of purpose, and strong leadership from the top. Innovation and adoption don’t happen in isolation; people need to understand why change is happening and trust how the new system delivers better outcomes. Without this clarity, teams often fall back on old habits and fail to explore the full capabilities of a modern core platform. From our FINEOS optimization consulting engagements, we’ve seen this firsthand: new employees tend to adopt the new system more readily than long-standing users who’ve come from complex legacy environments, especially the people without deep training and change management support. Users are naturally hesitant to abandon years of learned behaviors. Unless the benefits are made clear and tangible, resistance to change persists.
Optimizing First, Enabling AI Second
There’s plenty of low-hanging fruit to capture by fully optimizing a modern core system before enabling AI. In fact, many clients already have FINEOS AI available but ask us to keep it switched off – not due to a lack of interest, but because they’re prioritizing optimization, training, and change management. This is both understandable and prudent. In a heavily regulated industry like employee benefits, caution is essential. Clients want to ensure full compliance and organizational readiness before activating AI, a strategy we at FINEOS fully support. What this shows is that AI adoption will be gradual, ethical, and compliant and that’s exactly the right approach to ensure customers are treated fairly and correctly at every step.
Custom AI vs. Embedded Agentic AI
Some in-house IT teams invest heavily in building their own AI solutions. That can be effective if those solutions don’t duplicate what a modern core platform like FINEOS can deliver more efficiently and cost-effectively. Without seeing FINEOS AI, one executive leader at a major carrier told us they had invested heavily to build AI tools more advanced than FINEOS. But two months later, members of their IT and business team visited our headquarters and after one day with our team, they concluded that FINEOS AI was further ahead. They quickly recognized the advantage of a modern, cloud-native core platform with AI embedded across a complete enterprise architecture, including robust security, performance, and scalability, combined with rich functional depth and capability. To their credit, they quickly shifted course and aligned behind the FINEOS AI strategy.
Thanks to our 10+ year investment in building the FINEOS Platform and our purpose-built product suite, we deliver economies of scale and a multiplier effect when it comes to embedding and scaling impactful AI across the business.
Measurable Outcomes, Even Before AI
Already, without enabling AI, FINEOS clients are seeing measurable results:
- 70%+ digital customer engagement
- 50%+ reduction in unit operating costs vs. legacy systems
- In one large carrier’s case, 4x growth in new business
- Faster claims settlements and more accurate payments via a unified intake and adjudication process across absence, group, and supplemental health
- The ability to bundle products and offer flexible pricing strategies to win new business
These aren’t future promises; they’re tangible outcomes happening today.
The Modern Employee Benefits Carrier and the Power of AI
Agentic AI is poised to automate the back office, freeing valuable resources to improve customer experience where it matters most. As administrative overhead decreases, carriers can reinvest in new, value-added products and services that support prevention, protection, and recovery, especially around return-to-work. The employee benefits industry will continue to evolve, driven by changing employee expectations. The next generation of workers are seeking different benefits and service models than those before them. Carriers that embrace transformation and migrate to a modern purpose-built end-to-end platform will be positioned to continuously realize the benefits of AI and emerging technologies. Those that continue investing in fragmented tools or custom systems patched to legacy core systems will find themselves falling behind.
Why the Time to Migrate Is Now
Management consulting firms like PwC, EY and Capgemini estimate that most employee benefits carriers still spend upwards of 70% of their annual IT budgets on legacy maintenance, technical debt, and disconnected point solutions. That’s why what New York Life Group Benefit Solutions (NYL GBS) achieved is so important. As the only employee benefits carrier to fully free itself from legacy core systems, NYL GBS migrated a $4B book of business from six systems to FINEOS AdminSuite. Today, they manage all group, voluntary, and absence products in one place. (You can read more about their story here.)
The path to transformation has never been more compelling, more achievable, or more necessary.
Our Vision and Purpose, Powered by AI
At FINEOS, we believe AI brings us closer to our vision of: “A world where protection from injury, illness and loss is accessible to everyone.” AI is helping to accelerate medical research, improve social systems, and streamline work across industries. At FINEOS, we’ve embraced it and embedded it directly into our company and core platform because we know it helps us fulfill our purpose: “We help our customers care for the people they serve through the delivery of superior insurance technology.” That’s our commitment. And we believe the time to act and transform is now.
