The New Insurance Playbook: Why Composability Beats Build or Buy
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Insurers today are racing to adopt AI, but success doesn't come from building everything in-house or buying off-the-shelf software. It comes from composing intelligently.
Every major technology shift revives a familiar dilemma: Should we build? Should we buy?
With AI’s transformative impact on underwriting, claims, and CX, the question has never been more critical. But here’s the truth we’ve learned from working with 25+ insurers: it’s not about choosing one path - it’s about composing the right one.
Build where it gives you a competitive edge. Buy where the market is mature. Compose to scale fast and flexibly.
1. Compose, Don’t Choose: A New Strategic Imperative
Carriers that thrive in this AI wave don't swing to extremes. They adopt a composable strategy, assembling best-of-breed tools into flexible, future-ready systems.
That's why Neutrinos' Agentic AI Composer is built with modularity at its core:
- Add capabilities like AI intake, orchestration, and decision engines
- Integrate seamlessly with your core without costly rework
- Launch innovation in weeks-not quarters
The Market is Moving - Fast: Composable applications are no longer a future trend - they're a present reality. The global market is expanding rapidly, with estimates ranging from $5.5 billion in 2023 to over $6.6 billion in 2024, growing at a CAGR of 17% - 20%. Insurance is among the top sectors driving this shift, driven by the need for agile, scalable architectures that support rapid innovation.
Even back in 2022, Gartner had identified composable applications as a top strategic technology trend, and predicted that by 2024, 60% of finance organizations would prioritize composable systems in their tech investments. That prediction is proving true as insurers move toward modular platforms that deliver faster time-to-market, enhanced agility, and seamless integration with existing systems.
What’s changed now is how AI is accelerating the shift from rigid, one-size-fits-all solutions.
As Everest Group notes, enterprises are moving from traditional Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) software to Custom-Off-the-Shelf solutions (COSTS) that blend scalability with purpose-built design.
In insurance, that means you can now compose AI-powered tools tailored to your needs - faster, more flexibly, and without starting from scratch. These solutions let you retain control over core logic while streamlining everything else through intelligent automation.
2. Leverage Your Differentiators
Your underwriting models, pricing logic, and claims insights are your edge. But if your teams are stuck in manual workflows, that strategic advantage is diluted.
Use plug-and-play components to offload the heavy lifting:
- AI agents for triage, extraction, validation
- Rules engines to automate routine decisions
- Embedded intelligence to make every step smarter
Let your experts focus on where it counts.
Industry Challenge: Recent industry surveys indicate that underwriters spend a significant portion of their time, often 70%, on administrative and data processing tasks rather than core risk assessment activities⁵. This represents a critical opportunity for automation and AI-driven workflow optimization.
The composable approach addresses this by allowing insurers to deploy specialized AI tools for routine tasks while preserving human expertise for complex decision-making.
3. Accelerate Through Strategic Co-Creation
Our best work happens through co-creation; combining your domain expertise with our composable automation stack:
- Intelligent orchestration across underwriting, claims, and CX
- Real-time data fabric to unify fragmented systems
- Low-code workflows for rapid, compliant deployment
The result? Speed without compromise. Innovation without legacy disruption.
The Implementation Gap: While industry research shows that most insurers have begun experimenting with generative AI and automation technologies, the transition from pilot projects to full production deployment remains challenging. Many organizations cite integration complexity, data quality issues, and skills gaps as primary barriers. Composable platforms like Neutrinos are specifically designed to bridge this gap by providing pre-built integrations, standardized data models, and low-code deployment options that accelerate the path to production. And now, with AI making it easier to configure purpose-built agents, the barriers to real production-grade transformation are lower than ever.
Bottom Line
AI is the shift. Composability is the strategy.
Insurers who adopt a composable approach, buying wisely, building intentionally, and co-creating rapidly, aren't just keeping pace with change, they're leading it.
The evidence is clear; organizations that embrace modular, composable architectures are better positioned to adapt to market changes, integrate new technologies, and scale successful innovations across their operations.
Let's compose the future of insurance together.
