Stefaan Lambrecht from TRIPOD shared a typical story for insurance operations. Embedding critical business logic within a script inside a process cost the insurer €50 million. This wasn’t caused by careless people or bad intentions. It happened because the decision was invisibly embedded in a process where no one thought to look. That situation is far more common than most insurers realize. The natural conclusion is in the title. Link

“During a modernization program at a large insurance company, the CIO asked what seemed like a simple question:

“Where exactly do we calculate the deductible for travel claims?”

It should have been easy to answer.

But the team couldn’t find it.

They searched the claims system.
They checked the policy administration platform.
They looked in the rule repository.

Nothing.

Eventually they discovered the rule buried inside a workflow task—hidden in about 400 lines of script code inside a process.

But the real shock came later.

That rule had not been updated for four years, even though the underwriting department had already changed the deductible policy.

As a result, the claims system had been applying the wrong deductible.

For four years.

When they calculated the financial impact, the numbers were staggering.

That one hidden rule had resulted in over €50 million in incorrect claim payments.”