Core insurance software (policy, billing and claims)

The insurer's backbone, which writes the policy, bills for it and pays the claim

Picture a family in Pune. They insure their car, and the father has a life-insurance policy. One day a scooter hits the car, and they file a claim. Behind each of these moments sits one of an insurer's three core systems:

Policy administration

writes every policy, and records every change to it.

Billing

collects the premiums, the regular payments for the insurance.

Claims

records every loss, and pays it.

Together they are the insurer's core, just as the core-banking system is a bank's. (More on core banking in Market Segment 19.1, Core banking and banking as a service (BaaS), in Industry Vertical 19, Banking and regtech.) Like banks, most insurers buy their core rather than build it. This Market Segment is about the companies that sell it, and several of the largest build it in India. Their buyers are insurance companies around the world, many of them in America.

Each moment in the family's life with their insurer touches one of its three core systems: buying a policy touches policy administration, paying the premium touches billing, and filing a claim touches claims. Most insurers buy this core from software companies such as Guidewire, Duck Creek, Majesco, Sapiens and Zinnia, several of which build it in India.

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

This Market Segment has two sub-segments:

Property and casualty: the core for insuring cars, homes and businesses. Casualty insurance covers the harm you cause to other people.

Life and annuities: the core for insuring people's lives, and their savings. An annuity is a product that pays a person a regular income, usually after they retire.

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Property and casualty
Life and annuities

Property and casualty

Policy administration, billing and claims systems for property and casualty insurers

Back to the family's car from the start of this Market Segment, and the claim after the scooter hit it. The policy, the premium and the claim all live in a property-and-casualty core. An insurance company is also called a carrier.

Guidewire Software

with engineers in Bengaluru, has the most job postings in this Market Segment. It sells PolicyCenter, BillingCenter and ClaimCenter, the core of many of the world's property and casualty insurers, now run as a cloud service. Its Bengaluru centre is one of its largest.

Duck Creek Technologies

with engineers in Mumbai, and Insurity, with engineers in Delhi, sell the same kind of core. Duck Creek sells to large carriers. Insurity sells to mid-sized insurers, and to the agencies that write policies on their behalf.

Majesco

with engineers in Mumbai, began inside the Mastek group in Mumbai. It sells cloud cores for property, casualty, life and annuity insurers in America.

Sapiens

the Israeli company, with engineers in Bengaluru, sells cores for property, casualty and life insurance, and for reinsurance: insurance that insurers themselves buy, to share their largest risks.

Cogitate

with engineers in Mumbai, sells a cloud core built from separate modules, to smaller carriers.

Oceanwide

now part of Insurity, has engineers in Delhi. It sells cloud-based core systems to property and casualty insurers, mostly in North America. Its best-known product, Genoa, runs marine insurance: the cover for ships and their cargo. It lets brokers, underwriters, claims agents and shippers work on the same policy at once.

One company covered mainly in another Market Segment belongs here too:

Regnology

with engineers in Pune, Bengaluru and Delhi, is here for the reports that insurers must send to their regulators. (More on it in Market Segment 19.2, Fraud prevention, AML and regtech, in Industry Vertical 19, Banking and regtech.)

Life and annuities

Life and annuity policy administration, digital sales and servicing

Back to the father's life-insurance policy from the start of this Market Segment. It will run for thirty years. Every premium, every change of address and every change of the person who would receive the money must be recorded, for the whole of that time.

Zinnia

with engineers in Delhi, Bengaluru and Pune, sells the platforms of life and annuity insurers. They cover policy administration, and the order system through which financial advisers sell annuities. They also issue some policies automatically, without a medical examination.

Sureify

with engineers in Hyderabad, sells the digital front end of life insurers: the application, keeping in touch with the customer, and servicing the policy over its life.

Where each company in this Market Segment sits. Guidewire, Duck Creek, Insurity with Oceanwide, Cogitate and Regnology serve property and casualty insurers, Zinnia and Sureify serve life and annuity insurers, and Majesco and Sapiens sell cores on both sides.

The core that writes its own configuration.

An insurer's core is configured with thousands of rules, for each product and for each state or country. Changing it is slow and expensive. AI models now read the official description of a new product, the filing sent to the regulator, and draft the configuration. They also read the old core's code, to help move the insurer onto a new core. The cores built in Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai are adding both.

An AI model does two jobs on an insurer's core: it reads a new product's filing to the regulator and drafts the core's configuration, and it reads the old core's code to help the insurer move onto a new core.

So the family from the start of this Market Segment touches the insurer's core at every step. It wrote their car policy, it bills their premiums, and it paid their claim. And it will keep the father's life policy for thirty years.

Who they hire

Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What insurtech hires for.

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