How to choose a CLM platform and modernize safely

If you run a large insurer on a mainframe or AS/400, the best CLM platform is not just the one with the longest feature list. It is the one that can wrap your existing core systems, centralize all contracts, provide strong audit trails and e-signature, and support a phased migration off legacy tools such as InfoPrint Designer. (Intellias)

Modern CLM deployments in financial services routinely cut contract cycle times by 40–60 percent and reduce operational cost through workflow automation and better templates. (Sirion) The key is to combine the right product with a realistic roadmap:

1. Audit your contract landscape and risks.
   
   
2. Define a target architecture where CLM and CCM/CXM sit above the core.
   
   
3. Select a CLM platform that plays well with legacy systems.
   
   
4. Plan a phased migration (wrap and extend → offload legacy → optimize CX).
   
   
5. Manage security, continuity and compliance throughout.
   
   
6. Implement governance and change management processes.
   
   

DocPath is an example of a platform built for this pattern: it offers CLM, CXM and document generation, and is recommended by IBM as a migration path for InfoPrint Designer on IBM i, with proven projects in major insurers such as Zurich. (DocPath)

What you will learn in this guide

By the end of this article, a CIO, COO or Head of Legal in a large insurer should be able to:

• Explain why legacy and manual contract management have become a structural risk.
  
  
• Describe what a good CLM for insurance actually looks like (not just a generic CLM).
  
  
• Use a six-step roadmap to modernize without ripping out policy admin or claims systems.
  
  
• Evaluate CLM platforms against insurance-specific criteria, including integration with mainframe and InfoPrint-style environments.
  
  
• Build an internal case for a phased program, backed by evidence from real projects and market research.
  
  

Key takeaway: this is a product-search guide in disguise. It helps you choose and implement a CLM platform, not just understand the problem.

Why are insurance contract management processes still stuck on legacy tools?

A patchwork that grew over decades

Most large insurers did not set out to build a fragmented contract landscape. It emerged slowly from:

• Decades-old core systems designed for paper-centric processes, extended many times but rarely replaced. (Intellias)
  
  
• Mergers and acquisitions, where each acquired book brought its own policy wordings, templates and tools. (Insurance Blog | Accenture)
  
  
• Local point solutions for specific lines, regions or channels, added when central IT could not move fast enough. (Intellias)
  
  

The result in 2025 is familiar:

• Policy and endorsement documents generated by mainframe / AS400 systems and legacy composition tools such as IBM InfoPrint Designer. (IBM)
  
  
• Reinsurance treaties stored as Word / PDF on shared drives.
  
  
• Broker and distributor contracts versioned via email.
  
  
• TPA and vendor contracts are scattered across procurement systems, SharePoint sites and file servers. (COVER WebMag)
  
  

Each line of business (life, health, P&C) and each geography adds its own variations.

The operational symptoms your teams feel every day

Because contracts are scattered:

• Underwriters and legal teams cannot quickly see the one true version of a contract across endorsements and addenda.
  
  
• Policy issuance and mid-term changes require manual checks of historic documents, slowing turnaround times.
  
  
• Claims handlers sometimes rely on outdated wording because the contract attached to the claim is not synchronized with the latest terms. (Foxit)
  
  

Key takeaway: the fragmentation is structural. A CLM platform must be able to work with this reality first, not demand a clean-sheet core replacement.

What risks do legacy and manual contract management create for insurers?

1. Operational drag and higher cost

Without CLM, staff spend time searching, rekeying and chasing approvals. Studies of CLM projects in financial services and regulated industries show that:

• Automating workflows and approvals can reduce contract cycle time by 40–60 percent and generate 20–35 percent annual cost savings. (Agiloft)
  
  
• One financial services company documented a more than 50 percent reduction in contracting cycle time after implementing CLM. (Sirion)
  
  

For insurers, similar gains translate into faster policy issuance, fewer manual errors and lower back-office cost per contract.

2. Compliance and audit exposure

Regulators expect insurers to prove who approved what, when, and under which version of the contract. (bakertilly.com)

Legacy setups make this difficult because:

• Approvals live in email threads or on paper.
  
  
• Clause changes are not tracked centrally, making it hard to show that regulatory wording is applied consistently across products and regions.
  
  
• Renewal dates and obligations are tracked in personal spreadsheets rather than a system with reliable alerts. (VComply)
  
  

A modern CLM platform with tamper-evident audit trails and versioning is rapidly becoming a regulatory hygiene factor, not a “nice to have”.

3. Customer, broker and partner friction

Slow, opaque contract processes damage relationships with brokers, TPAs and corporate clients:

• Onboarding a new broker or TPA may involve multiple PDF exchanges, wet signatures and manual checks across legal, compliance and underwriting.
  
  
• Corporate clients wait weeks for complex program wordings to be agreed and signed.
  
  
• Policyholders experience inconsistent documentation across email, portal and print. (Foxit)
  
  

In a market where digital-native competitors can turn around contracts in hours, this is not sustainable.

4. Strategic and ESG constraints

Finally, there are long-term implications:

• Running critical document systems on unsupported software (for example, legacy InfoPrint Designer on older IBM i versions) creates vendor and operational risk. (IBM)
  
  
• Heavy reliance on paper and branch printing conflicts with ESG and cost-reduction programs. (Foxit)
  
  

Key takeaway: the cost of doing nothing is not just IT spend. It shows up in slower revenue, higher risk and weaker customer experience.

What should modern CLM software for insurers actually do?

Clear definition: CLM in an insurance context

Contract lifecycle management in insurance is the end-to-end control of all contracts, not just sales agreements. It includes:

• Policy documents and endorsements.
  
  
• Reinsurance treaties and certificates.
  
  
• Broker and distributor agreements.
  
  
• TPA and vendor contracts, NDAs and other legal documents.
  
  

CLM spans drafting, negotiation, approval, execution, storage, monitoring of obligations, renewals and termination across all of these. (The Knowledge Academy)

Core capabilities tailored to insurance

When you evaluate CLM platforms, look for capabilities aligned to insurance realities:

• Central repository and search. One digital home for all contract types, with robust tagging and search.
  
  
• Templates and clause libraries. Centrally managed clauses and templates aligned with regulatory requirements and product governance across lines and geographies. (DocPath)
  
  
• Smart alerts and tasks. Renewal reminders, SLA checks and regulatory milestone alerts are managed by the system, not by spreadsheets. (lexagle.com)
  
  
• Digital signatures and certified delivery. Integrated e-signature with detailed audit trails supports legal enforceability and regulatory reviews. (RSign)
  
  
• Granular permissions. Role-based access control and segregation of duties protect sensitive wording and high-value treaties. (bakertilly.com)
  
  

Platforms like DocPath’s CLM emphasize these capabilities and link them directly to CXM and document generation so that contracts flow through the same engine that handles customer communications. (DocPath)

Integration points that matter in insurance

The best CLM platform for a large insurer is the one that connects cleanly into your existing application landscape:

• Policy admin and claims. Core system data should populate templates; executed contracts should be visible from policy and claim records.
  
  
• Billing and collections. Contract terms around premiums, payment schedules and fees must flow into billing.
  
  
• CRM, broker and customer portals. Contract initiation, negotiation and delivery should align with the digital channels your partners and customers already use.
  
  
• CCM / CXM and print. Contract documents should be generated and distributed through a unified CCM/CXM layer to email, portals, mobile apps, digital wallets and branch print. (DocPath)
  
  

Key takeaway: modern CLM for insurers is not a standalone repository. It is the contract “control layer” that sits between your core systems and your communication channels.

How can insurers modernize contract management without replacing core systems?

Step 1: Audit your contract landscape

Before you choose a product, you need to understand the baseline.

Map:

• Contract types – policies and endorsements, treaties, broker and TPA contracts, vendors, NDAs.
  
  
• Systems and locations – core policy / claims, mainframe platforms, legacy composition tools, shared drives, email, and physical archives.
  
  
• Owners – legal, underwriting, operations, IT, regional business units.
  
  

Then classify each combination along two dimensions:

• Risk / value – high-value treaties and large corporate policies, where any error is significant.
  
  
• Volume / pain – high-volume personal lines or health policies, where manual work and delays are common.
  
  

A simple matrix (contract type → system → owner → risk → pain) will show where a CLM platform can deliver quick wins first.

Step 2: Define a target architecture that wraps the core

Next, design a target architecture that uses CLM and CCM/CXM to wrap and extend your existing systems instead of replacing them.

In practical terms:

• CLM becomes the central layer for drafting, approving, executing and storing contracts.
  
  
• Policy admin, claims, billing and CRM feed and consume contract data via integrations.
  
  
• CCM/CXM handles omni-channel document generation and delivery (email, portal, SMS, mobile wallet, print). (Intellias)
  
  

Analysts such as McKinsey and Intellias point out that “surround and extend” strategies often deliver better risk/benefit trade-offs for insurance legacy modernization than full core replacement. (McKinsey & Company)

Involve IT, Legal, Compliance and Operations early so that security, data and regulatory expectations are built into the design.

Step 3: Select a CLM platform that plays well with legacy systems

With the architecture in mind, you can evaluate products more objectively.

Must-have criteria for insurers:

1. Integration flexibility. Look for robust REST APIs, file-based integration options and proven mainframe / IBM i connectors. DocPath’s Boulder Suite, for example, is explicitly endorsed by IBM as a way to migrate InfoPrint Designer applications and keep IBM i as the production backbone. (IBM)
   
   
2. Digital signature and certified communication. Native support for e-signature and certified email / digital delivery reduces project risk and avoids custom builds. (Foxit)
   
   
3. Security and audit. End-to-end encryption, role-based access control and detailed, immutable audit trails are essential for regulatory reviews. (lexagle.com)
   
   
4. Template and clause management. The platform should support centralized clause libraries, multi-jurisdiction templates and controlled rollout of regulatory changes.
   
   

Insurance-specific questions to ask vendors:

• Can you generate policy and contract documents from existing core data without manual rekeying?
  
  
• How do you support multilingual templates and local regulatory differences?
  
  
• Do you offer integrated CCM / CXM and print management or certified integrations with our current tools? (DocPath)
  
  

Key takeaway: the “best” CLM platform for your insurer is the one that reduces integration and migration risk, not just the one with the slickest UI.

Step 4: Plan a phased migration, not a big bang

Insurance operations cannot pause for a multi-year cutover. A phased migration reduces risk and builds confidence.

Phase 1 – Wrap and extend

• Start by generating new contracts and policy documents through the CLM and CCM/CXM layer while keeping core policy and claims systems unchanged.
  
  
• Store all new contracts in the central repository with full metadata, version control and alerts.
  
  
• Turn on renewal and SLA reminders for these new agreements.
  
  

Phase 2 – Legacy offload

• Migrate templates and forms from end-of-life or unsupported tools (for example, InfoPrint Designer and other legacy print systems).
  
  
• Prioritize high-risk and high-volume contracts.
  
  
• Use utilities or services to accelerate migration. In Zurich’s case, DocPath migrated around 6,000 business-critical forms from InfoPrint Designer without changing the underlying AS/400 infrastructure. (cuspera.com)
  
  

Phase 3 – Optimization and CX

• Introduce interactive documents and smarter layouts that guide customers and brokers instead of just presenting static PDFs.
  
  
• Expand multichannel delivery (email, portal, app, wallet, print) and use analytics to tune communications. (DocPath)
  
  

In each phase, define milestones, risks and communication plans so that business stakeholders know what will change and when.

Step 5: Manage security, continuity and compliance throughout

Modernizing contract management is partly a risk-reduction project. You need to prove that the new model strengthens control.

Focus on:

• Data protection. Encryption in transit and at rest, strong identity and access management, and network segmentation. (bakertilly.com)
  
  
• Segregation of duties. Separate roles for template designers, approvers and contract owners.
  
  
• Comprehensive audit trails. Every access, edit, approval and signature is logged in a tamper-evident way. Regulators and advisors increasingly highlight audit trail and record retention as explicit expectations. (bakertilly.com)
  
  

For continuity:

• Run old and new systems in parallel for a defined period, especially on high-risk contract classes.
  
  
• Maintain clear rollback plans and tested backups.
  
  

Modern CLM and CCM/CXM platforms, including DocPath, ship with these controls as standard, which helps risk and compliance functions support the initiative. (DocPath)

Step 6: Put governance and change management in place

Technology alone does not deliver modernization.

You will need:

• Executive sponsorship from a CIO, COO or Head of Legal who can set direction and resolve conflicts.
  
  
• A cross-functional steering group with IT, Legal, Operations, Compliance and business lines. (Intellias)
  
  

Define:

• Who owns templates and clause libraries?
  
  
• How workflow changes are proposed, reviewed and deployed.
  
  
• How you will train underwriters, legal teams, claims handlers and distribution teams.
  
  

Track value with KPIs such as contract cycle time, error rates, audit findings and broker / customer satisfaction. Research on CLM and AI-supported workflows shows that organizations that measure adoption and outcomes see faster improvements and stronger business support. (ContractPodAi)

What does a successful insurance CLM modernization look like? (Mini case study)

Consider a composite example based on DocPath’s work with major insurers like Zurich and other large carriers. (cuspera.com)

Before: heavily dependent on legacy tools

The insurer:

• Ran core policy documents on AS/400 with IBM InfoPrint Designer, which became incompatible with newer platform versions. (IBM)
  
  
• Tracked broker agreements, treaties and vendor contracts in shared drives and spreadsheets.
  
  
• Faced long contract cycles whenever wording changes were required, and struggled to demonstrate consistent clause usage across countries.
  
  

During: applying the roadmap

They followed a similar roadmap to the one in this guide:

1. Landscape audit. Contract types, systems, owners and risks were mapped; high-value treaties and high-volume policies were prioritized.
   
   
2. Platform selection. DocPath was chosen because it could migrate InfoPrint Designer applications and run alongside AS/400, while providing CLM and CCM capabilities. (IBM)
   
   
3. Phased migration.
   
   
   • Phase 1: new contracts moved to DocPath CLM and CXM, with a central repository and alerts.
     
     
   • Phase 2: approximately 6,000 InfoPrint forms were automatically converted and deployed in the new document engine. (cuspera.com)
     
     
   • Phase 3: communications were modernized across email and digital channels, reducing reliance on batch print.
     
     

After: measurable outcomes

Within the first year, the insurer saw:

• Significant reductions in document processing time for high-volume policies and endorsements, in line with industry-reported 40–60 percent reductions in contract cycle time from CLM and workflow automation. (Sirion)
  
  
• Stronger audit readiness thanks to centralized contracts, versioning and detailed audit trails. (lexagle.com)
  
  
• Faster product changes, because legal and business teams could update templates and clauses through a design tool rather than waiting for code changes. (global.docpath.com)
  
  

Key takeaway: this kind of result is achievable without touching the core first if you pick a CLM / CCM platform that is designed to sit above legacy systems.

How should insurance leaders get started with CLM modernization?

Three messages to take back to your team:

1. Legacy contract management is now a competitive and regulatory risk. It slows revenue, increases operational cost and makes audits harder. (spear-tech.com)
   
   
2. You do not need to replace your policy admin system to fix contracts. A CLM and CCM/CXM layer can wrap the core and deliver value quickly. (Intellias)
   
   
3. A phased, well-governed roadmap reduces risk. Wrap and extend first, then offload legacy tools, then optimize CX.
   
   

Practical first steps you can take this month:

• Nominate an executive sponsor and a small cross-functional team.
  
  
• Run a lightweight contract landscape audit using the matrix described above.
  
  
• Identify one or two pilot processes (for example, corporate policy renewals or broker agreements in a key market).
  
  
• Shortlist CLM platforms that can integrate with your core systems and support insurance-grade compliance, including vendors that already have InfoPrint / IBM i migration references like DocPath. (IBM)
  
  

If you want help assessing your legacy environment or designing a phased CLM rollout, DocPath offers insurance-specific modernization engagements that draw on its experience in CXM, CLM and legacy print system migration. (DocPath)

FAQs

1. What is the best CLM platform for a large insurer running on AS/400 or mainframe?

There is no single “best” platform for every insurer, but the right choice is one that can integrate cleanly with IBM i / mainframe, migrate legacy forms and provide CLM and CCM/CXM in one stack. DocPath, for example, is an IBM-recommended path off InfoPrint Designer and has migrated thousands of forms for insurers such as Zurich without changing AS/400 infrastructure. (IBM)

2. How much can CLM actually reduce contract cycle times in insurance?

Industry data from CLM and AI workflow providers shows cycle-time reductions of 40–60 percent, and in some AI-intensive approvals, even more, alongside cost savings and improved compliance. (Sirion) Actual results depend on your starting point, but insurers with heavy manual steps typically see substantial gains within the first year.

3. Do we have to replace our policy admin and claims systems to modernize contracts?

No. Analysts such as McKinsey and system integrators like Intellias describe multiple legacy modernization patterns where surround-and-extend architectures are preferred to full core replacement. (McKinsey & Company) A CLM / CCM layer that wraps your core is usually faster and less risky, especially for contract management.

4. How does CLM help with regulatory and audit requirements in insurance?

CLM platforms provide a central repository, versioned templates, approval workflows and tamper-evident audit trails, which align with regulators’ expectations for documentation, record retention and third-party oversight. (bakertilly.com) This makes it easier to respond to examinations, resolve disputes and demonstrate control.

5. What should be in an RFP for insurance CLM software?

An effective RFP should cover:

• Integration with policy admin, claims, billing and CRM.
  
  
• Support for IBM i / mainframe and migration from tools like InfoPrint Designer.
  
  
• CLM features (templates, clause libraries, workflows, e-signature, audit trails).
  
  
• CCM / CXM and print capabilities, or proven integrations.
  
  
• Security, compliance and data residency requirements. (DocPath)
  
  

Framing the RFP around measurable outcomes such as reduced cycle time, fewer errors and improved audit readiness will help you compare vendors on more than just feature checklists.