Legacy Modernization Insurance: Mitigating High-Value Transaction Risk

Every time an insurance adjuster clicks "Submit" on a 30-year-old terminal screen to process a $500,000 claim, your organization is one heartbeat away from a catastrophic failure. The insurance industry is currently built on a foundation of "black box" systems—COBOL backends and mainframe interfaces where the original developers retired a decade ago and the documentation is non-existent.

The global technical debt has ballooned to $3.6 trillion, and nowhere is this more visible than in Financial Services and Insurance. When you attempt legacy modernization through traditional "Big Bang" rewrites, you aren't just building software; you're performing open-heart surgery on a patient who is currently running a marathon.

TL;DR: Legacy modernization in insurance fails because of "documentation archaeology"; Replay solves this by using visual reverse engineering to extract business logic and UI components from live user workflows, reducing modernization timelines from years to weeks.

The High-Value Transaction Trap: Why Insurance Modernization Stalls#

In insurance, a "transaction" isn't just a database entry. It is a complex web of regulatory compliance, actuarial logic, and historical data mapping. Most CTOs recognize that their legacy systems are a bottleneck, yet 70% of legacy rewrites fail or significantly exceed their timelines.

The primary reason for this failure is the "Documentation Gap." Statistics show that 67% of legacy systems lack up-to-date documentation. When an architect is tasked with legacy modernization, they spend the first six months playing archaeologist—digging through thousands of lines of undocumented code to understand why a specific validation rule exists.

The Cost of Manual Extraction#

The manual process of modernizing a single complex insurance screen—such as a policy underwriting dashboard—typically takes 40 hours of manual effort. This includes interviewing users, analyzing network traffic, and hand-coding React components to match legacy behavior.

With Replay, that same screen is extracted, documented, and converted into a functional React component in 4 hours. We are moving the industry from a state of "guessing what the code does" to "recording what the user does" as the ultimate source of truth.

Comparing Modernization Strategies for Regulated Industries#

When evaluating your legacy modernization roadmap, you generally face three paths. For insurance firms handling high-value transactions, the risk profile of these paths varies wildly.

⚠️ Warning: The "Big Bang" approach is the leading cause of CTO turnover in the insurance sector. Attempting to replicate 30 years of edge cases in a single release cycle is statistically likely to result in a multi-million dollar write-off.

Visual Reverse Engineering: A New Paradigm for Legacy Modernization#

The future of legacy modernization isn't rewriting from scratch—it's understanding what you already have. Replay introduces the concept of Visual Reverse Engineering. Instead of reading dead code, Replay records real user workflows.

When an underwriter navigates a legacy application, Replay captures the state transitions, the API contracts, and the UI patterns. It then uses an AI Automation Suite to generate modern, documented React components and technical debt audits.

Step 1: Assessment and Recording#

Instead of months of discovery meetings, you record the "Golden Path" of your high-value transactions. This creates a video-based source of truth for the reverse engineering process.

Step 2: Extraction and Library Creation#

Replay identifies recurring UI patterns and business logic. It automatically populates the Library (Design System), ensuring that your modernized application maintains consistency without manual CSS hacking.

Step 3: Blueprinting and Code Generation#

The Blueprints (Editor) allow architects to see the underlying architecture of the legacy system. Replay then generates clean, maintainable TypeScript code.

typescript
// Example: Generated component from Replay visual extraction
// This component preserves the complex validation logic found in the legacy mainframe
import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import { InsuranceValidator } from './utils/compliance';

interface PolicyData {
  policyId: string;
  premiumAmount: number;
  riskScore: number;
}

export const ModernizedUnderwritingForm: React.FC<{ initialData: PolicyData }> = ({ initialData }) => {
  const [data, setData] = useState<PolicyData>(initialData);
  const [isCompliant, setIsCompliant] = useState(false);

  // Business logic preserved from legacy system recording
  useEffect(() => {
    const checkCompliance = async () => {
      const result = await InsuranceValidator.validateHighValue(data);
      setIsCompliant(result.isValid);
    };
    checkCompliance();
  }, [data]);

  return (
    <div className="p-6 bg-white rounded-lg shadow-md">
      <h2 className="text-xl font-bold">Policy Review: {data.policyId}</h2>
      {/* Modernized UI components mapped from legacy screen regions */}
      <input 
        type="number" 
        value={data.premiumAmount} 
        onChange={(e) => setData({...data, premiumAmount: Number(e.target.value)})}
        className={isCompliant ? 'border-green-500' : 'border-red-500'}
      />
      <button disabled={!isCompliant} className="btn-primary">
        Approve High-Value Transaction
      </button>
    </div>
  );
};

💰 ROI Insight: By automating the extraction of UI and logic, Replay delivers a 70% average time savings. For an enterprise with 500 legacy screens, this represents a savings of approximately 18,000 man-hours.

Mitigating Risk in High-Value Transactions#

In the context of legacy modernization, risk isn't just about downtime; it's about data integrity. If a modernized system calculates a premium differently than the legacy system due to a misunderstood line of COBOL, the financial implications are massive.

Replay mitigates this by generating automated E2E tests based on the original legacy behavior.

Automated Testing and API Contracts#

Replay doesn't just give you a pretty UI. It generates the "glue" that allows your new frontend to talk to your old backend (or a new microservice). It generates:

• •API Contracts: Clearly defined schemas for legacy endpoints.
• •E2E Tests: Playwright or Cypress tests that ensure the new component behaves exactly like the old screen.
• •Technical Debt Audit: A report detailing which parts of the legacy logic are redundant or high-risk.

typescript
// Example: Replay-generated E2E test to ensure transaction parity
import { test, expect } from '@playwright/test';

test('High-Value Transaction Parity Check', async ({ page }) => {
  // Navigate to the modernized screen
  await page.goto('/modern/underwriting/confirm');

  // Input data that triggered a specific edge case in the legacy system
  await page.fill('#premium-input', '500000');
  await page.selectOption('#risk-category', 'High-Risk-Commercial');

  // Replay-captured validation logic check
  const submitButton = page.locator('button:has-text("Approve")');
  await expect(submitButton).toBeDisabled(); // Logic: High-value requires secondary approval
  
  // Verify API contract matches legacy recording
  const [request] = await Promise.all([
    page.waitForRequest(res => res.url().includes('/api/v1/validate')),
    page.click('#validate-btn'),
  ]);
  
  expect(request.postDataJSON()).toMatchObject({
    transactionValue: 500000,
    requiresAudit: true
  });
});

Built for Regulated Environments#

Insurance and Financial Services cannot use "black box" AI tools that send data to the public cloud. Legacy modernization in these sectors requires a higher standard of security.

Replay is built for these environments:

• •SOC2 & HIPAA Ready: Compliance is baked into the platform.
• •On-Premise Availability: Keep your sensitive transaction data within your own firewall.
• •No Data Leakage: Replay analyzes UI patterns and network metadata, not PII (Personally Identifiable Information), unless explicitly configured.

From 18 Months to Days: The Replay Workflow#

How do you actually implement legacy modernization using Replay? We follow a structured three-phase approach that replaces the traditional multi-year waterfall.

Phase 1: The Recording Sprint (Days 1-5)#

Identify the top 20% of screens that handle 80% of your transaction volume. Subject matter experts (SMEs) record themselves performing these tasks in the legacy system. Replay's engine begins the process of "Visual Extraction."

Phase 2: The Blueprinting Session (Days 6-10)#

Architects review the generated Flows. This provides a visual map of the system architecture that was previously hidden in the code. You identify which components should be part of your new Design System (Library).

Phase 3: The Automated Migration (Days 11+)#

Using the AI Automation Suite, Replay generates the React components, TypeScript interfaces, and unit tests. Developers focus on refining the business logic rather than manually recreating buttons and layouts.

💡 Pro Tip: Don't try to modernize everything at once. Use Replay to extract the high-value transaction flows first. This provides immediate ROI and proves the concept to stakeholders without the risk of a full system shutdown.

The Future of the Enterprise Architect#

The role of the Enterprise Architect is shifting. We are no longer just "drawers of diagrams"; we are "orchestrators of understanding." Legacy modernization used to be a career-ending risk. With visual reverse engineering, it becomes a predictable, repeatable process.

By turning video into the source of truth, Replay eliminates the "telephone game" between business users, analysts, and developers. What you see is what you get—and what you get is a fully documented, modern codebase.

Frequently Asked Questions#

How does Replay handle extremely old systems like green screens or Citrix-based apps?#

Replay's visual engine is platform-agnostic. Because we use visual reverse engineering, we can analyze any interface that a human can interact with. By recording the screen and the network traffic (where available), Replay reconstructs the component logic regardless of the underlying legacy tech stack (COBOL, Delphi, PowerBuilder, etc.).

What about business logic that isn't visible on the UI?#

While Replay excels at extracting UI-bound logic, it also captures the "side effects" of user actions—API calls, database triggers, and state changes. These are documented in the Blueprints, providing a map for developers to implement the non-visual backend logic.

Does Replay replace my development team?#

No. Replay is a force multiplier for your development team. It handles the "grunt work" of legacy modernization—the 40 hours of manual extraction per screen—so your senior developers can focus on high-level architecture and new feature development.

How do we ensure the generated code meets our internal standards?#

Replay's AI Automation Suite can be configured with your organization's specific coding standards, linting rules, and design system constraints. The output isn't just "generic code"; it's your code.

---

Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay - see your legacy screen extracted live during the call.