- The Starting Point: A System That Created More Work Than It Solved
- Architecture Decisions That Supported the Business Goal
- How We Worked: Embedded, Not Handed Off
- What Changed After Go-Live
- What This Project Illustrates About Insurance Claims Platform Modernization
- Why Canadian Insurers Choose a Partner Like Hamdi Services
- FAQs
Disability claims processing sits at the intersection of operational complexity and human urgency. A claimant waiting on a decision isn't just a file moving through a queue. They're often off work, managing a health condition, and depending on a clear, timely answer from their insurer.
When Desjardins brought us in with a modernization mandate for their disability claims platform, the core problem wasn't missing data. The existing system made it nearly impossible to act on that data quickly, consistently, or with any transparency.
Here's how we approached it, what we built, and what the outcome looks like in practice.
The Starting Point: A System That Created More Work Than It Solved
Years of workarounds had accumulated in the legacy platform. Claims intake ran through disconnected channels. Adjusters had no single view of a claimant's file. Tracking a claim from intake to decision meant manual status checks across multiple tools. Audit trails were incomplete — a real compliance exposure for a regulated insurer.
The team handling claims was skilled. The system was holding them back.
The business outcome Desjardins needed was straightforward: reduce cycle time from intake to decision, give adjusters full traceability on every file, and give claimants real-time visibility into where their claim stood. The technical challenge was delivering all of that without disrupting active claims in production.
Architecture Decisions That Supported the Business Goal
Microservices to Isolate Risk and Enable Independent Deployment
We rebuilt the platform on a microservices architecture using .NET 8. Each claims domain — intake, assessment, medical review, decision, and communication — became its own independently deployable service. The team could update the intake flow without touching the decision engine. Failures stayed contained.
For a regulated insurer, that isolation matters beyond deployment convenience. It makes it straightforward to demonstrate to auditors exactly which component processed a specific claim and when.
Angular Front End for Adjuster and Claimant Interfaces
The adjuster-facing interface was built in Angular, designed around a single unified view of each claimant's file: all documents, status history, communications, and pending actions in one place. No tab-switching, no manual lookups.
The claimant-facing portal gave policyholders real-time status updates. This reduced inbound calls to the service team and gave claimants the transparency they needed during a difficult period.
Both interfaces were delivered in French and English. For a Quebec-based insurer like Desjardins, bilingual delivery isn't a nice-to-have. It's a baseline requirement.
CI/CD with Azure DevOps and Docker Compose
We built the full CI/CD pipeline using Azure DevOps and Docker Compose. Every code change moved through automated testing, build validation, and staged deployment before reaching production. That gave the Desjardins engineering team confidence that releases wouldn't introduce regressions into active claims.
The containerized environment also made it easy to replicate production conditions in staging, which shortened the feedback loop during QA.
Observability with OpenTelemetry, Dynatrace, and Splunk
A claims platform needs more than uptime monitoring. You need to know when a specific step in the workflow is taking longer than expected, when error rates spike in a particular service, and how to trace a specific transaction end-to-end when something goes wrong.
The observability stack we embedded — OpenTelemetry for instrumentation, Dynatrace for performance monitoring, and Splunk for log aggregation and search — gave the operations team exactly that. Incidents that previously required hours of manual log review became diagnosable in minutes.
How We Worked: Embedded, Not Handed Off
One of the most common failure modes in insurance platform modernization is the handoff model. An agency delivers a system, documentation is thin, and the internal team inherits something they don't fully understand.
We embedded directly into Desjardins' sprint cadence. Our engineers joined their standups, used their ticketing and reporting tools, and adapted to their release schedule. When decisions needed to be made about scope or technical trade-offs, those conversations happened in the same forums where the internal team was already working.
This is the same model we applied at Bell for telecom order systems optimization, documented in our case study portfolio. Embedded delivery isn't just a preference. In regulated industries, it's the only model that produces systems the internal team can actually own after go-live.
What Changed After Go-Live
The platform now supports end-to-end claims management from intake to decision, with full traceability at every step. Adjusters work from a single interface. Claimants receive status updates in real time. The audit trail is complete and accessible — which matters for both internal governance and regulatory review.
Cycle time from intake to decision came down. The service team handles fewer inbound status inquiries. And the platform is built to extend: adding a new claims type or integrating a new medical review workflow doesn't require rebuilding the core system.
Across our engagements, we see an average ROI lift of 30 percent. Projects like this one — where modernization directly affects operational throughput and compliance posture — tend to sit at or above that benchmark.
What This Project Illustrates About Insurance Claims Platform Modernization
A few patterns from this engagement apply broadly to any Canadian insurer considering a similar project.
Legacy systems don't fail all at once. They slow you down incrementally. The cost shows up in adjuster hours, claimant frustration, and compliance risk that compounds over time.
Bilingual delivery is a technical requirement, not a translation task. Building a platform that works correctly in both official languages — with consistent terminology, proper formatting, and full feature parity — requires designing it that way from the start. Retrofitting bilingual support after the fact is expensive and error-prone.
Observability is part of the platform, not an add-on. Insurers operate under audit and regulatory scrutiny. A system that can't produce a complete, queryable record of what happened to a specific claim is a liability. Instrumenting the platform with OpenTelemetry and connecting it to Dynatrace and Splunk isn't optional infrastructure. It's a compliance asset.
The CI/CD pipeline is what makes the platform maintainable. A modern front end sitting on top of a manual deployment process isn't modernization. The pipeline is what lets your team ship improvements without introducing production risk.
Why Canadian Insurers Choose a Partner Like Hamdi Services
The mid-market Canadian insurance space has a specific set of needs that most agencies don't address together. You need a team that understands Canadian compliance context, can deliver bilingual platforms, has real experience with the technical stack your organization uses or is moving toward, and will work inside your delivery process — not alongside it.
Hamdi Services is a Montreal-based agency that has delivered exactly this kind of work for Desjardins and other regulated-industry clients across more than 12 completed projects. The team brings full-stack capability from product strategy through post-delivery 24/7 support, with no offshore handoffs and no gaps in pipeline ownership.
If your claims platform is creating operational drag or compliance exposure, the right starting point is a direct conversation about your current state and what a modernization path looks like for your organization.
Book a discovery call with our team to talk through your timeline, constraints, and success metrics.
FAQs
What does insurance claims platform modernization typically involve?
It means replacing or rebuilding the systems that manage claims from intake to decision — the adjuster-facing interface, the claimant portal, the workflow engine that routes claims through review stages, the audit trail, and the integrations with policy, medical, and payment systems. The goal is to reduce cycle time, improve traceability, and lower compliance risk.
How long does a claims platform modernization project take?
Timeline depends on the scope of the existing system and how many integrations need to be rebuilt or preserved. A focused modernization of a specific claims type, like disability, can move through design, build, and staged deployment in several months. Full platform rebuilds for large carriers take longer. Every engagement at Hamdi Services starts with a discovery phase to define scope and timeline before any commitment is made.
What technology stack works best for Canadian insurance platforms?
There's no single answer, but .NET 8 and Angular are well-suited to regulated-industry platforms because of their maturity, strong typing, and enterprise support. Azure DevOps and Docker Compose handle CI/CD and containerization reliably. For observability, OpenTelemetry combined with Dynatrace and Splunk gives operations teams the visibility they need for both performance monitoring and audit-ready logging.
How do you handle bilingual requirements for Quebec-based insurers?
Bilingual delivery needs to be designed in from the start, not added at the end. That means FR/EN parity in the UI, consistent terminology across both languages, proper locale handling in date and currency formatting, and full feature parity. Hamdi Services has delivered bilingual platforms for Quebec clients including Desjardins and builds FR/EN support into the architecture from day one.
What's the difference between embedded delivery and a standard agency engagement?
In a standard agency model, the vendor works separately and delivers a finished product. In an embedded model, the agency team works inside your sprint cadence, uses your tools, joins your standups, and participates in your decision-making. Embedded delivery produces systems your internal team understands and can maintain — because they were part of building them.
How do you maintain production stability during a modernization project?
Staged deployment through a CI/CD pipeline is the primary safeguard. Each release goes through automated testing and validation before reaching production. Containerization with Docker Compose makes it possible to replicate production conditions in staging. Observability tooling means the team can detect and respond to issues in production before they affect claimants or adjusters.
What should a Canadian insurer look for when evaluating a modernization partner?
Look for demonstrated experience in regulated industries, not just general software delivery. Confirm the partner can deliver bilingual platforms if you operate in Quebec. Ask specifically about CI/CD ownership and post-delivery support — many agencies hand off and disappear. And find out whether the team will embed in your process or work independently, since embedded delivery significantly reduces the risk of inheriting a system your team can't maintain.