Insights by Sonny Patel, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Socotra.
Today’s insurers rely on digital platforms to manage policies, interact with customers, and connect with partners. As a result, slow service and system outages can seriously impact the business.
Uptime and reliability are no longer just technical metrics; they’re now essential for business continuity, customer satisfaction, and profitability. By focusing on reducing both planned and unplanned downtime, insurers can maintain a consistent, high-quality experience for customers and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market. Here are the best practices for improving reliability in insurance technology.
Reduce Unplanned Downtime with Cloud-Native Infrastructure
Unplanned downtime refers to unforeseen system interruptions caused by factors like hardware failures, bugs, or human error. This type of downtime often happens during peak usage times, leading to significant business disruptions.
Many insurers, as well as insurance core systems, have migrated to the cloud in an effort to improve reliability. However, these “lifted and shifted” systems miss out on the true benefits of the cloud, because they’re merely ported versions of on-premise software. To minimize the risk of unplanned downtime, insurers need to leverage a cloud-native core platform, which is architected from the ground up to provide built-in redundancy across availability zones and multi-site failover capabilities. This makes it much less likely that end customers will experience disruptions, even in the event of localized outages.
Additionally, cloud-native platforms enable automated testing for every feature, across all customers. This comprehensive approach ensures that any potential issues are identified and addressed proactively, reducing the chances of unplanned downtime and keeping critical systems running smoothly.
Minimize Planned Downtime by Implementing Frequent, Small Updates
Planned downtime occurs when a system is intentionally taken offline to accommodate upgrades, configuration changes, data transformations, new integrations, customizations, or preventative maintenance. While it is an unavoidable part of keeping systems up-to-date and secure, minimizing the frequency and duration of planned downtime is key to maintaining continuous service delivery. Most core systems are bulky and monolithic, building their updates into large, once or twice-per-year events. These systems make updates—no matter how small—costly, resource-intensive, and prone to massive downtime.
One of the most effective ways to reduce planned downtime is by implementing small, frequent updates, which can be tested more easily and rolled out more quickly than larger, more disruptive upgrades. Insurers can enable this approach to updates by choosing a cloud-native core platform that is built from the ground up to support small, self-contained updates.
This practice of frequent updates—particularly when scheduled during off-peak hours—ensures that system downtime is kept to a minimum, typically lasting only a few minutes when necessary, and that business operations remain largely unaffected. Additionally, when updates are designed to be backwards compatible, insurers can avoid breaking changes that would otherwise require extended downtime to address.
Case Study: Socotra Delivers Industry-Leading Reliability in 2024
Many insurers today are still struggling with reliability. A recent report showed that 30% of financial and insurance organizations experienced high-impact outages at least once per week. These companies also shared that outages generally took more than 30 minutes to resolve.
Socotra, a provider of cloud-native core technology, can help insurers improve the reliability and resiliency of their operations. In 2024, we announced industry-leading reliability metrics for our global insurance customers:
99.9941% average uptime across all customers
Less than 32 minutes of planned and unplanned downtime per customer
Planned downtime includes 50 upgrades per customer
Socotra’s consumer-grade reliability is built on the same technologies and techniques used by platforms like Gmail, LinkedIn, and Zoom. As a true cloud-native platform, we offer zero-downtime and backwards-compatible upgrades, as well as the industry’s most advanced resiliency capabilities.
Conclusion
As the insurance industry relies more on technology, ensuring systems are reliable and high-performing is key to maintaining trust and business continuity. By leveraging cloud-native infrastructure and making smaller and more frequent updates, insurers can reduce disruptions and deliver consistent service.
Focusing on these strategies will ultimately boost efficiency, strengthen customer loyalty, and support growth. Insurers that prioritize performance and reliability can better position themselves to adapt to the digital age and meet changing customer needs.
About Sonny Patel
Sonny Patel is the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Socotra, where she leads the Product and Engineering teams and owns and executes on Socotra’s product strategy. She is a recognized thought leader in AI with over 20 years of experience building and launching products at Fortune 500 companies. Prior to Socotra, Sonny was an integral leader at Dell, Microsoft, Amazon, and LivePerson. She holds an MBA in Strategy & Entrepreneurship from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and a Master’s in Computer Science from Texas A&M University.
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