Re-Engineering a Mission-Critical Insurance Platform
Modernising a core insurance platform from a 1990s Microsoft Access and Visual Basic stack to a high-performance Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL core on AWS, with React and JavaScript powering responsive interfaces, backed by secure APIs and cloud-native automation.
Sector
Insurance
Technology
Ruby on Rails, React, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, AWS
Scope
Full platform re-engineering
Records migrated
Legacy tables consolidated
Hours saved per month across processes
The Challenge
Decades of Technical Debt Threatening Growth
A core insurance platform, originally developed in the mid-1990s using Microsoft Access and Visual Basic, had become a significant source of technical debt.
With over 20 years of fragmented data trapped in an obsolete architecture, the business faced escalating risks to data integrity, manual errors, and inhibited growth.
The Solution
Meticulous Reverse-Engineering of Embedded Business Logic
Modernising a system of this age required more than a simple 'lift and shift'. It required the meticulous reverse-engineering of decades of embedded business logic.
Our team untangled the legacy Visual Basic code and migrated the platform to a high-performance Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL core on AWS, with React and TypeScript delivering fast, maintainable interfaces on top of clear, versioned APIs.
01.
Intelligent Data Migration
We built a custom, iterative Ruby pipeline to extract and validate more than 4 million records. By challenging the original database structure, we normalised the architecture and condensed 67 redundant tables into a streamlined, high-performance dataset of 34 tables.
02.
Re-Engineering Complex Logic
We reverse-engineered the critical insurance workflows, including Bordereau reporting and premium calculations, rebuilding them with optimised database queries and indexing to ensure total accuracy at scale.
03.
Operational Sovereignty
We replaced manual, time-consuming processes with intelligent automation. Through Xero integration and automated member balance tracking, workflows that previously occupied an entire day are now executed in seconds.
The Outcome
Technology as a Foundation for Growth
The result is a platform where technology is no longer the risk factor, but the foundation for growth. By eliminating operational friction and technical debt, we enabled the client to lead with their technology rather than fight it.
Performance
Near-instant response times across 4M+ records.
Efficiency
Automated invoice and certificate generation, significantly reducing human error.
Control
A modern, secure, and scalable cloud infrastructure that the client fully owns and understands.
Formulate: engineering rigour for the insurance industry.
The Next Step
Build your foundation on engineering rigour.
Ready to evolve your legacy infrastructure or launch the next generation of your insurance platform? Let's discuss the business challenge you need to solve.
Complete the form below to schedule a discovery call with one of our senior engineers.