Underwriting Platform Modernization for a Large European Insurance Brokerage Company

About Our Client

The Client is a long-standing Western European insurance brokerage that offers tailored insurance services to both individual and business customers, with a reputation built over decades for reliability and customer focus.

A Low-Performing Underwriting Platform Was Holding Back the Business

The Client struggled with its proprietary underwriting platform: slow loading, instability, and unreliable reports repeatedly disrupted workflows. The deeper causes were systemic — the platform had been built without a cohesive architecture, accumulated years of legacy code and technical debt, and ran on outdated components that created performance bottlenecks and security gaps. Several earlier IT vendors had tried and failed to fix the issues or communicate effectively. The Client then turned to INNERLUXES for a partner who understood insurance software and could stabilize performance and provide dependable long-term support.

From Audit to Action in Record Time

Within just five days, INNERLUXES reviewed the platform's code and infrastructure, spoke with stakeholders to pinpoint the most pressing problems, and recommended targeted improvements — quickly assessing critical functionality even without any technical documentation. Won over by the team's speed, clarity, and business focus, the Client contracted INNERLUXES for continuous maintenance and support of the platform.

Maintenance and Troubleshooting

INNERLUXES assembled a dedicated team of back-end engineers, a database engineer, a DevOps specialist, a business analyst, and a project manager.

Reengineering and documentation

Facing missing documentation and no knowledge transfer from the previous vendor, the team:

• Reverse-engineered the software requirements through an exhaustive analysis of the codebase to decipher the platform's structure, logic, and functionality.
• Collaborated closely with stakeholders — the business analyst met repeatedly with the Client's insurance professionals to capture practical context and bridge the knowledge gap.
• Created comprehensive documentation, building a detailed repository that became a critical knowledge source for ongoing maintenance and future development.

Ongoing maintenance

• User-driven fixes — resolving reported issues such as calculation errors, report inconsistencies, and errors in recording financial transactions, with daily morning calls to align priorities and an email channel for urgent issues during the day.
• Proactive monitoring — continuously tracking server performance, database health, and platform responsiveness to resolve potential issues before they reached users.

Platform Evolution

INNERLUXES also extended the platform. Through regular stakeholder meetings, the team identified and prioritized requirements — refining how optional insurance features are handled, adding new insurance calculations, streamlining reporting, and strengthening end-to-end financial transaction tracking. Using an incremental approach to deliver results within business constraints, the team also:

• Refactored the code — addressing inefficient practices and gradually improving the architecture for better performance and security.
• Optimized insurance product forms — restructuring complex data-entry forms for faster loading, more reliable updates, and stronger security.

Structured Communication Without Overreporting

Throughout the engagement, INNERLUXES emphasized clear, structured, concise communication. Daily meetings covered ongoing tasks, emerging issues, and new feature requests, supporting collaborative decisions and prompt incorporation of feedback. The Client's team had full access to a dedicated Jira project hub to monitor progress and task statuses in real time, backed by detailed, up-to-date records; where it added value, the team prepared concise how-to guides for new features and workflows. Periodic progress reports from the project manager summarized milestones, upcoming tasks, and any risks — concise yet comprehensive — keeping all stakeholders aligned.

Results: Higher Efficiency, Agility, and Peace of Mind

Over two years of collaboration, the broker's underwriting platform became more reliable, efficient, and user-friendly. Underwriters now work more productively without errors or unstable performance, and all employees benefit from faster workflows, timely issue resolution, and clear updates. Targeted improvements to architecture and code quality increased flexibility and simplified maintenance, while transparent communication brought greater operational certainty and lasting peace of mind.

Methodologies and Tools

Q&A sessions, business requirements analysis, document analysis, system analysis. PHP, WordPress, MySQL, Jira, Confluence.