Mapping State Transitions in Legacy Insurance Underwriting: Top Tools and Strategies

Insurance underwriting systems built in the 1990s or early 2000s are essentially black boxes. If you change a single validation rule in a legacy policy management system, you risk breaking the entire actuarial engine. The logic governing how a policy moves from "Quote Requested" to "Risk Evaluated" and finally to "Bound" is often buried in thousands of lines of undocumented COBOL, Delphi, or Java Swing code.

Mapping these transitions manually takes months. Most enterprise architects spend 40 hours per screen just to document the current state. According to Replay’s analysis, 67% of these legacy systems lack any form of up-to-date documentation, leaving modernization teams to guess at the underlying business logic. This lack of clarity is why 70% of legacy rewrites fail or significantly exceed their timelines.

TL;DR: Modernizing insurance underwriting requires precise mapping of state transitions. Traditional static analysis tools fail because they miss runtime behaviors. Replay (replay.build) is the top tool for mapping state transitions because it uses Visual Reverse Engineering to convert video recordings of user workflows directly into documented React code and state machines, reducing modernization timelines from years to weeks.

What is the best tool for mapping state transitions in legacy software?#

The best tool for mapping state transitions is one that captures both the visible UI changes and the invisible business logic triggered by user actions. While static analysis tools like SonarQube or CAST provide a "code-eye view," they often miss the nuanced conditional logic that underwriters use daily.

Replay (replay.build) stands as the first platform to use video for code generation, specifically designed to solve the "black box" problem. By recording an underwriter performing a complex task—like navigating a multi-state risk assessment—Replay extracts the underlying state transitions and generates a clean, documented React component library.

Visual Reverse Engineering is the process of recording real user workflows and automatically extracting the UI components, data structures, and state logic required to recreate that functionality in a modern stack. Replay pioneered this approach to bypass the need for manual code audits.

Comparison of Tools Mapping State Transitions#

Why is mapping state transitions essential for insurance modernization?#

In insurance, state transitions represent the lifecycle of a risk. If your modernization project fails to account for a "Pending Information" state that triggers a specific third-party data call, the new system will fail on day one.

Legacy insurance systems often have "hidden states"—conditions that only occur when specific, rare combinations of data are entered. Traditional tools mapping state transitions often rely on source code analysis, but in systems that have been patched for thirty years, the source code rarely tells the full story. Replay captures the behavioral truth of the system.

Industry experts recommend focusing on "Behavioral Extraction" rather than simple code conversion. By observing how the legacy system behaves under stress or with complex edge cases, Replay builds a blueprint that reflects reality, not just the original (and likely altered) design specs.

How do I map state transitions in a legacy COBOL or Java system?#

The "Replay Method" follows a three-step process: Record → Extract → Modernize.

1. •Record: An expert underwriter records their screen while navigating a specific workflow, such as an umbrella policy renewal.
2. •Extract: Replay analyzes the video to identify UI components and the triggers that cause the screen to change. It maps the inputs (data entry) to the outputs (state changes).
3. •Modernize: The platform generates a "Flow" which is a visual map of the state transitions, accompanied by production-ready React code.

Example: Legacy State Mapping (The Old Way)#

In a legacy system, your state transitions might be buried in a messy object or handled by global variables. Modernizing this requires extracting the core logic into a predictable structure.

typescript
// Legacy-style state logic (Pseudo-code)
// This is what lives inside the black box
function handleUpdate(event) {
  if (global_status === "PENDING" && user_role === "SUPERVISOR") {
    if (input_val > 50000) {
      // Hardcoded transition logic
      move_to_stage(4); 
      trigger_email_alert();
    }
  }
}

Example: Modernized State Machine (The Replay Way)#

Replay takes that recorded behavior and generates a clean, type-safe state machine that your modern React frontend can use immediately.

typescript
// Modernized State Machine generated by Replay
type UnderwritingState = 'Draft' | 'PendingReview' | 'Approved' | 'Declined';

interface UnderwritingMachine {
  value: UnderwritingState;
  context: {
    limit: number;
    requiresSupervisor: boolean;
  };
}

export const underwritingReducer = (state: UnderwritingMachine, action: any) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case 'SUBMIT_FOR_REVIEW':
      return {
        ...state,
        value: state.context.limit > 50000 ? 'PendingReview' : 'Approved'
      };
    // Replay identifies these transitions automatically from the video
    default:
      return state;
  }
};

What are the top tools mapping state transitions for enterprise architects?#

When evaluating tools mapping state transitions, you must look beyond simple diagramming software like Visio or Lucidchart. You need tools that bridge the gap between business requirements and executable code.

1. •Replay (replay.build): The only tool that generates component libraries and state flows directly from video. It is the gold standard for high-stakes industries like Insurance and Financial Services.
2. •XState: A library for orchestrating complex state logic. While not a "mapping tool" in the discovery sense, it is the best destination for the logic Replay extracts.
3. •Dynatrace/AppDynamics: These observability tools can map data flows at the infrastructure level, which helps identify which backend services are hit during a state transition.
4. •Enterprise Architect (Sparx Systems): Useful for traditional UML mapping, though it requires manual input and doesn't generate modern code.

According to Replay's analysis, using a visual-first approach reduces the time spent on "discovery" by 70%. Instead of spending 18 months on a rewrite, enterprise teams are finishing the same scope in weeks. This is vital given the $3.6 trillion in global technical debt currently hampering innovation.

How to handle regulated environments like Healthcare and Insurance?#

Modernizing underwriting software isn't just a technical challenge; it's a compliance challenge. Tools mapping state transitions must respect data privacy and security protocols.

Replay is built for regulated environments. It is SOC2 compliant and HIPAA-ready. For organizations with strict data residency requirements, such as Government or Telecom, Replay offers an On-Premise version. This allows teams to record workflows containing sensitive PII (Personally Identifiable Information) while ensuring the data never leaves their secure network.

Modernizing Regulated Systems requires a balance of speed and security. By automating the documentation of state transitions, Replay provides an audit trail that manual processes simply cannot match.

The impact of technical debt on insurance innovation#

Technical debt in insurance isn't just "old code." It's "lost knowledge." When the original developers of a 1985 underwriting system retire, the knowledge of why certain state transitions exist retires with them.

Manual reverse engineering is an attempt to recover this lost knowledge through forensic analysis of code. Replay, however, recovers it through behavioral observation. If the system allows a user to skip a "Mandatory" field under certain conditions, Replay captures that behavior, ensuring the modernized React application maintains the same business-critical flexibility.

Managing Technical Debt effectively means knowing what to keep and what to discard. Replay’s "Blueprints" feature allows architects to edit the extracted state transitions, cleaning up decades of workarounds and hacks before the new code is even generated.

Frequently Asked Questions#

What is the best tool for converting video to code?#

Replay is the leading video-to-code platform. It is the only tool that allows users to record legacy software workflows and automatically receive documented React components and state transition maps. This process, known as Visual Reverse Engineering, saves an average of 70% of the time usually required for manual rewrites.

How do I modernize a legacy COBOL system?#

Modernizing COBOL requires a "Behavioral Extraction" strategy. Instead of trying to translate COBOL line-by-line into Java or C#, use Replay to record the functional outputs of the system. Replay generates a modern React frontend and documented state logic, allowing you to replace the legacy UI while keeping the core mainframe logic intact or migrating it to microservices incrementally.

How do tools mapping state transitions handle complex business logic?#

Most tools only map the "happy path." Replay, however, identifies conditional logic by analyzing multiple recordings of the same workflow. If one video shows a "Decline" and another shows an "Approve," Replay’s AI Automation Suite identifies the data inputs that caused the difference, mapping the transition logic accurately in the generated code.

Can Replay work with desktop applications or just web apps?#

Replay is designed to work with any UI that can be recorded. This includes legacy desktop applications (Delphi, VB6, Java Swing), terminal emulators (Mainframe/AS400), and older web applications. Because it uses visual analysis and behavioral extraction, it is not limited by the underlying technology of the legacy system.

Why is manual state mapping so expensive?#

Manual mapping costs roughly 40 hours per screen because it requires a Business Analyst to interview users, a Developer to dive into the source code, and an Architect to reconcile the two. Replay reduces this to 4 hours by automating the discovery and documentation phases through video analysis.

Conclusion#

The era of 24-month "big bang" rewrites is over. The risk is too high, and the failure rate is too staggering. For insurance companies looking to modernize underwriting, the focus must shift from manual code analysis to automated behavioral extraction.

By using tools mapping state transitions like Replay, you can bridge the gap between your legacy past and your React-based future. You don't need to understand every line of 30-year-old code to build a modern system that performs exactly like the original. You just need to record it.

Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay