Why IT operational resilience matters for insurers now more than ever

For insurers, the idea of resilience is nothing new. But what’s changing, and why it matters now, is what operational resilience demands in practice. No longer just about responding to disruption, resilience is now about designing for it. The firms that succeed will be those that can adapt quickly, recover confidently, and continue delivering critical services, even under stress.

The pressure is growing. Evolving FCA regulations, ever increasing cyber threats, and the sheer complexity of legacy and third-party systems mean that operational resilience is now a board-level concern. And with the cost of failure measured in fines, reputational damage and customer churn, a reactive approach simply won’t do.

At CGI, we work with insurers, regulators, and critical national infrastructure providers to strengthen resilience from the ground up. This experience has shown us that the most resilient organisations focus on a few consistent principles: clarity, speed, visibility, and continuous learning.

Build on structure with a framework for IT resilience

Resilience can’t be treated as a one-off project. It needs a framework that combines IT, cyber, operations and governance in a joined-up, measurable way. For insurers, that means aligning incident management, risk ownership, and business continuity across all lines of business, from claims to customer service.

A modern framework brings together secure cloud hosting, API-led integrations and scalable ITSM tooling. It also needs to handle the realities of hybrid environments, where legacy systems, cloud platforms, and third-party services all play a role in keeping critical operations running.

Speed and precision in incident response

When disruption strikes, how fast and effectively you respond can define the impact, and the outcome. It’s no longer enough to log incidents and escalate manually. The most resilient insurers are introducing automated detection, AI-driven triage, and real-time collaboration tools to reduce response times and avoid siloes.

What sets these organisations apart is not just how they respond to incidents, but how they learn from them. Integrated runbooks, change management, and post-incident reviews ensure constant improvement.

Ensure operational stability under pressure

Operational stability is the quiet strength behind every resilient business. Insurers face pressure to maintain core services like policy administration, claims, and underwriting, even when systems are strained.

Proactive monitoring, capacity planning, and routine optimisation allow systems to flex with demand. Our experience in managing large-scale environments for clients across insurance, justice and utilities shows the value of real-time observability and predictive maintenance, not just reacting to failure, but preventing it.

Disaster recovery is more than a document

A disaster recovery plan that lives in a binder is no longer enough. Resilient insurers rehearse their response, test failovers regularly, and treat disaster recovery as a live capability, not a theoretical one.

This means building in replication, backup-as-a-service, and failover environments, but also embedding response simulation into regular operations. War room exercises are increasingly common, and increasingly necessary.

Automate to reduce risk and increase consistency

Human error remains one of the biggest sources of disruption. Automation helps reduce that risk, while increasing speed, consistency, and scalability. From patching and backup to environment provisioning and escalation workflows, automation delivers both resilience and efficiency.

Through our work with major public and private sector organisations, we’ve seen how even modest automation, starting with patching or backup, can dramatically reduce recovery times and improve consistency across IT estates.

Accelerate risk management with real-time intelligence

Resilience is about risk; not just managing it but anticipating it. Mapping dependencies, understanding impact tolerances, and dynamically assessing vulnerabilities across your IT estate are now essential.

Tools that bring together real-time threat feeds, AI-led vulnerability scanning, and integrated risk modelling allow insurers to prioritise investment and address weaknesses before they become incidents.

Resilience through optimisation

Optimisation is often overlooked, but it’s key to building resilience without escalating cost. That doesn’t mean large-scale transformation, it means fixing what matters: removing bottlenecks, streamlining service delivery, and integrating smarter ways of working.

Breaking change down into manageable streams is proving more effective than long, disruptive programmes. It’s a practical approach, and one we’ve helped clients implement across cloud, ITSM and incident management.

Make cyber threat intelligence a core resilience capability

No resilience strategy is complete without cyber readiness. Real-time threat feeds, vulnerability management, and regular simulation exercises now form the baseline of operational resilience. 

In insurance, where sensitive data, regulatory pressure, and customer trust are all at stake, cyber resilience needs to be integrated, not siloed.

Where to start

Operational resilience isn’t a box to tick. For insurers, it’s a differentiator. Those that embed resilience into their operations, systems, and governance will not only meet regulatory expectations, but they’ll also gain the trust of customers and partners alike.

At CGI, we help insurers achieve that goal, combining proven delivery, 24/7 service management, AI-led automation, and risk-focused consulting to support real-world resilience, every day.

Get in touch with us to book a free operational resilience workshop or vulnerability assessment or come along to our Breakfast briefing: Achieving operational resilience in Insurance. Whether you’re addressing regulatory requirements or looking to strengthen day-to-day resilience, our experts are here to help.