In the insurance industry, 2025 has become the year of uncomfortable clarity.
Yes, most organizations have embraced nearshore IT teams. Yes, AI tools are now part of the average developer’s workflow. And yes, budgets have shifted toward transformation over maintenance.
So why do so many insurance CIOs still feel like they’re running in place?
At Ascend, we’ve spent the last few years inside the delivery engines of insurers large and small. What we’ve learned is simple but often missed: the blockers to innovation aren’t technical—they’re structural.
This blog explores how the smartest tech leaders are using nearshore and AI in unexpected ways—not just to do more, but to rethink what their teams are allowed to do at all.
From “Extra Hands” to “Decisional Pods”
For over a decade, nearshore development has been framed as a cost-efficiency tool: same time zone, high-caliber engineers, lower price tag. But in 2025, that playbook is obsolete.
Today’s leading CIOs are no longer asking nearshore teams to just code.
They’re giving them decision rights—within carefully defined scopes—and asking them to own outcomes, not just tasks.
These “decisional pods” function like high-context, low-friction R&D units.
They move quickly, question assumptions, and—in some cases—deliver features faster than internal teams thought possible.
It’s not because they’re smarter.
It’s because they’re positioned differently: embedded enough to care, removed enough to challenge.
The Real Job of AI Isn’t Speed. It’s Interrogation.
Much of the insurance sector still views AI through the lens of productivity:
- Faster code generation
- Automated testing
- Document processing
And sure, those things matter.
But here’s what we’ve seen on the ground: the most powerful use of AI inside insurance software isn’t automation. It’s logic discovery.
It’s the ability to look at a 12-year-old block of rules logic and ask, “Why does this exist?”
And then use AI to trace it, simulate it, or even expose contradictions embedded over years of quiet changes.
The big win isn’t cleaner code.
It’s the realization that much of the current logic shouldn’t exist anymore.
That only happens when AI is paired with teams bold enough to ask—and positioned to act.
Parallel Builds: Where Innovation Actually Happens
One of the clearest patterns we’ve noticed in 2025 is this:
The most exciting insurance software isn’t being built inside the org chart.
It’s being built alongside it.
Smart tech leaders are spinning up parallel environments with nearshore teams—not to patch the existing stack, but to reimagine it. These “shadow builds” aren’t wild bets. They’re safe, low-risk experiments:
- A new quoting engine, stripped of legacy logic
- A claims interface optimized with AI-native UX
- A policy system tested against real-time third-party data models
And when one of these pilots works? It’s not “rolled out.” It’s ported in—clean, modular, validated.
This is how true modernization happens in legacy-bound firms: quietly, adjacently, and then suddenly.
Where Ascend Comes In
We built Ascend not just to provide nearshore talent—but to rethink what that talent could do if positioned properly.
Our teams don’t just execute roadmaps.
They test constraints.
They refactor logic.
They structure themselves to own results—not wait for tickets.
And because we understand insurance—regulatory needs, business rules, data privacy—we do it without introducing risk to your core stack.
Whether it’s creating decisional pods, running logic discovery audits, or staging parallel innovations, we don’t “augment.”
We help you build smarter systems in smarter places.