Rebuilding resilience and trust through modern policy administration

UK general insurers are navigating a perfect storm of rising claims costs, extreme-weather losses and sustained regulatory scrutiny. While motor and home premiums have eased slightly in 2025, claims costs remain high, keeping pressure on combined ratios and service quality. At the same time, the FCA’s Consumer Duty has moved from “implementation” to “evidence and outcomes”, and the 31 March 2025 operational resilience milestone has shifted the bar from planning to provable performance. 

A PAS evolving into a strategic control room

In this environment, the policy administration system has evolved from a back-office workhorse into the control room for outcomes, value and resilience. For UK carriers and MGAs, a modern PAS has become a strategic necessity.

Product governance, fair value and the full lifecycle

The FCA now expects insurers to demonstrate that they are preventing foreseeable harm, delivering fair value and ensuring good outcomes throughout the entire product lifecycle. This demands embedded product governance that records versioning, approvals and sign-offs, as well as fair-value evidence linked to cover, pricing and distribution.

A modern PAS can go further by tracking outcomes across renewals, mid-term adjustments and cancellations, enabling insurers to respond quickly to emerging trends and maintain compliance confidence.

Pricing transparency and evidence-based decisions

Pricing transparency has become another defining feature of the post–price-walking landscape. The ability to explain and evidence every pricing decision is essential. Modern systems now provide clear audit trails that show who made changes, when and why, supported by workflowed approvals and automatic management information to detect inconsistencies between new business and renewal.

Tight integration with rating and decision engines makes pricing more agile and accountable, allowing insurers to adapt fast without compromising control.

Beyond documentation: the new operational resilience reality

Operational resilience has moved beyond documentation. The end of the FCA’s transition period means firms must now prove they can stay within impact tolerances for critical business services such as quote, bind and claims notification.

A forward-looking PAS will offer service mapping and live health dashboards, alongside tested failover capabilities, recovery runbooks and event timelines that capture detection, response and user impact. In short, resilience has become something insurers must demonstrate in daily operations, not just on paper.

Responding to inflation, delays and weather volatility

At the same time, claims inflation and weather volatility have become constant stress tests for the market. Supply-chain delays and severe weather have driven UK motor and property claims to record highs.

A fit-for-purpose PAS helps insurers re-rate rapidly when repair or building costs surge, automate endorsements to manage portfolio drift and feed real-time loss data back into underwriting rules. These capabilities shorten reaction times and protect margins, turning data into actionable intelligence.

Configurability, openness and visibility: the new standard

The best systems today are defined by configurability, openness and visibility. Insurers want to manage change through business-led configuration rather than complex coding, cutting release cycles from months to days.

They want open, event-driven architecture that connects seamlessly with data sources such as telematics, property and credit, and integrates effortlessly with pricing, billing, CRM and claims platforms. They also need analytics that reveal friction points and renewal outcomes, helping them achieve fair value and identify vulnerability across the policy journey.

Across the market, insurers using modern PAS technology are seeing faster product refreshes in response to cost volatility, cleaner renewal outcomes backed by transparent decisioning, reduced downtime through tested recovery processes and stronger portfolio resilience during adverse weather.

Preparing for tomorrow’s opportunities

A modern policy administration system will help insurers to be compliant, data-driven and customer-focused, capable of meeting today’s regulatory demands while preparing for tomorrow’s opportunities.