WNS recently briefed me on its Digital Policy Administrator (DPA) solution/platform, a patent for which is pending and is not yet publicly available. The DPA is positioned as a utility-style third-party administration (TPA) platform for the life and annuities (L&A) sector, built to reduce the burden of legacy technology debt and enable faster rollout of new products.

Market Challenges in L&A

Carriers in the L&A sector face persistent structural challenges. Productivity gains have lagged other industries, even as cost pressures mount. Carriers continue to operate on aging legacy technology platforms, increasing complexity and slow responsiveness. Product innovation cycles are lengthening, just as market volatility and interest rates drive greater demand for flexible annuity products.

Outsourcing is widely used, but it has not resolved these challenges. Four of the top five L&A carriers already outsource parts of their administration. Still, most TPAs remain anchored to labor-intensive delivery models with limited automation. As a result, carriers are unable to fully escape the inflexibility and inefficiency challenges they face.

WNS’ Position in Insurance

Insurance contributes roughly a quarter of WNS’ total revenue, highlighting the importance of this vertical to its overall strategy. It supports ~70 active insurance engagements, employing ~18k insurance specialists. Within this workforce are ~650 actuarial professionals, ~500 data and analytics experts, and ~5k customer experience specialists. The practice also leverages ~50 digital solutions and accelerators to support engagements across all insurance engagements.

Recent acquisitions extend WNS’ digital toolset. Vuram, acquired in 2022, brought automation and BPM capabilities, while Kipi.ai, acquired in 2025, enhanced GenAI development. Together, these acquisitions create a transformation-led approach that is now in ~90% of WNS’ insurance engagements.

Addressing Core L&A Challenges

WNS’ Digital Policy Administrator is designed to address two core barriers for L&A carriers. First is legacy debt: policy administration, billing, claims, and reinsurance are frequently handled on outdated systems that are costly to maintain and difficult to modernize. Second is the challenge of slow product rollout cycles, which prevents insurers from capturing emerging demands in a timely fashion.

WNS positions the DPA as an integrated solution combined with core systems, with proprietary platforms, automation, and global delivery in mind. The objective is to offer insurers an option beyond piecemeal outsourcing, a packaged TPA model focused on measurable efficiency and configurability with speed.

A Utility Model for Policy Administration

The DPA is designed as a utility service rather than as a customized, one-off deployment. Its design principles are straightforward but ambitious. The delivery model follows an automation-first philosophy. In practice, this means processes are automated wherever possible before being offshored; only the most complex elements are retained onshore. The principle is not just to focus on cost optimization but ensuring standardization and consistency across servicing operations.

WNS chose to partner for the policy core rather than build its own. The rationale was speed and flexibility; deploying a proven core accelerates adoption while avoiding heavy in-house development cycles. The platform is cloud-deployed, API-enabled, and designed to support per-policy pricing, aligning costs with actual business volumes.

This avoids lock-in by incorporating open-source components where feasible. Change is driven by configuration, not code rewrites, maximizing reusability and ensuring the system remains upgradable. These design elements support a packaged TPA model that is scalable and adaptable to client needs.

Architecture: Automation-First Design

At the center of DPA is Verisk FAST, the chosen core policy platform. FAST provides new business, policy administration, billing, claims and reinsurance in a microservices and API-based architecture. It minimizes reliance on middleware and reduces the need for patchwork integrations.

Surrounding the core is a set of platforms and frameworks:

• Skense, WNS’ proprietary intelligent document platform for ingestion, triaging, and indexing
• Ushur, supporting voice-to-text, agent assist, and automated outbound correspondence
• Genesys, providing omnichannel routing, IVR, and speech analytics
• Framework integrations, connecting to general ledger systems, policy and agent data, reinsurance, illustrations, and e-applications.

Together, this ecosystem enables straight-through-processing and reduces manual interventions. Automation is designed into the workflow from the start rather than being layered in afterward.

Global Delivery Model

The DPA is powered by WNS’ global delivery model. Work is distributed by geography and complexity. Policy servicing, billing, and collections are managed through back-office teams in India. Voice operations are delivered from South Africa and the Philippines. For complex or high-touch needs such as complaint management, WNS provides onshore delivery to ensure responsiveness and quality.

Supporting layers include IT service desk, infrastructure and security, HR, F&A, and governance/compliance functions.

Early MVP Flows

One example of early product flow is beneficiary change processing, where Skense ingests change request documents and FAST executes the policy updates with no manual interventions.

Additional flows are being added, including surrenders, licensing, and commission management, demonstrating the platform’s ability to move beyond simple transactions.

Target clients are threefold: existing WNS insurance BPO clients looking to modernize, new clients seeking an integrated TPA platform, and current FAST users exploring an overlay model with WNS services.

WNS’ Outcomes with DPA

WNS claims several measurable outcomes from the DPA platform. New product setup can be completed in six to eight weeks, supported by API integrations. The SaaS core is configuration-driven, enabling upgrades without code rewrites. Automation and GenAI augmentation are expected to reduce error rates and operational costs. Pricing is aligned per policy, with fixed implementation costs.

Roadmap for Expansion

AI capabilities are planned to expand into predictive claim prevention, underwriting automation, and advanced pricing models. These additions are positioned to move the platform transactional efficiency toward decision support. The framework is designed for geographic adaptability. WNS has developed an ecosystem framework to allow substitution of core systems to meet geo-specific product requirements, enabling flexibility for clients to operate with technology tailored to their market needs. WNS is currently executing this in the U.K. and Australian markets. It also plans to extend framework services with additional partner integrations and digital servicing capabilities, reflecting insurer demand for configurable ecosystems rather than rigid, closed deployments.

Outlook

The DPA signals WNS’ bid to reposition L&A administration as a standardized utility rather than a labor-led outsourcing model. Anchored on Verisk FAST and supported by proprietary IP (e.g., Skense), the platform reflects an automation-first philosophy designed to scale beyond piecemeal modernization efforts.

While many TPAs and policy administration systems are already moving toward cloud-based, API-enabled, and automation-augmented models, most progress has been incremental and concentrated on standard transactions. Complex flow often remains heavily manual, and pricing still leans towards fixed contracts rather than usage-based structures. Few offerings in the market have demonstrated a fully standardized utility-style model that combines automation across simple and complex flows with per-policy economics and global delivery at scale.

The real test is whether carriers will entrust a third-party utility with functions historically viewed as too core to externalize. Early MVP flows (beneficiary changes, licensing, commissions) are a proving ground, but large-scale adoption will hinge on demonstrating resilience, compliance, and cost predictability under production conditions.

If WNS succeeds with this nascent offering, the DPA could reset expectations for L&A policy administration by introducing per-policy economics, faster product adaptability, and a scalable alternative to fragmented outsourcing. If execution falters, it risks becoming another example of a TPA promising modernization without delivering differentiation. The upcoming 12 to 24 months after market introduction will determine which outcome prevails.