Halving claims cycle time for a regional insurer

Meridian had spent two years and a substantial budget on a claims platform replacement that had not reached production. The programme had been structured as a single cutover, so nothing was demonstrable until everything was finished.

Meanwhile the legacy system was constraining the business: average claim cycle time was 14 days against a market benchmark of 6, and every new product required bespoke engineering.

We began with a three-week discovery that focused on why the previous programme had stalled rather than on requirements gathering. The core finding was structural: no capability could be released independently, so nothing could be validated.

We restructured delivery around the strangler pattern, routing claims through a facade and migrating one claim type at a time, with reconciliation between old and new running continuously.

The first claim type went live in week nine. The last legacy path was retired in month eight.

Average cycle time fell from 14 days to 6.2. New product configuration moved from an engineering task measured in weeks to a configuration task measured in hours.

Because migration was incremental, no cutover weekend was required and no claim was processed twice.