As the number of quarterly announcements for coretech selections continue to trend lower, Coretech Insight has expanded the scope of this ongoing review to add announcements for go-lives, expansions, ecosystem partners, and cloud migrations.

This expanded review covers coretech vendor announcements from the last decade. Our findings reflect a growing emphasis on ecosystem partners, show a correlation between robust ecosystems and deal volumes, and illustrate a slow “changing of the guard” that is occurring among P&C core platform providers.

Overview

The first quarter of 2025 continued the trend of new lows in published coretech deals. Rather than repeating updates on new quarterly lows, Coretech Insight expanded the scope of this review to gain a broader picture of coretech vendor activity. We found an increasing emphasis on ecosystems that represents an opportunity for insurtechs and reflects risk to buyers and coretech vendors from a slow “changing of the guard” among coretech providers.

Analysis

Figure 1 below shows core platform selection announcements from 2015 through 2025 Q1. We expanded the scope of our review beyond carriers and MGAs to include “other” entities such as TPAs, risk pools, and government entities. While the overall number of announcements increased with this change in scope, the trend of a post-2020 spike followed by decline remained. The number of new coretech selection announcements in the first quarter of 2025 set a new low for the past decade.

Figure 1. Public P&C Core Platform Selections, 2015 - 2025 Q1

Note: These totals do not reflect all new system selections. We estimate these cover 30 to 40% of all selections from P&C insurance carriers, MGAs/MGUs, and other entities such as risk pools and TPAs. Although not a complete record of all public and private deals, these announcements are valuable as a publicly verifiable record. See Note 1. Methodology below for more details.

Many coretech providers do not issue press releases for clients until they have gone live in production. For some vendors, waiting until after go-live is a conservative approach they apply to all clients. For others, the timing of announcements is driven by other factors and the nature of each client relationship. In some cases, a client may not be announced until several years have passed and the client expands its relationship with the vendor.

Figure 2, below, shows the past decade of coretech client announcements with a broader scope that includes selections, go-lives, and expansions. Volumes are naturally higher, but the trend of a spike and decline after 2020 remains.

Figure 2. P&C Core Platform Announcements – Selections, Go-Lives, and Expansions, 2015 - 2025 Q1

Coretech vendors are not sitting still. There continues to be a great opportunity for modernization in the industry, and there has been no shortage of coretech and insurtech announcements, marketing campaigns, and thought leadership content focused on this need. If coretech providers are not announcing new client wins, what are they promoting?

Figure 3, below, provides some answers. From 2015 to 2019, we see a growing number of “ecosystem” announcements that cover professional services and tech solution partners. We also begin to see announcements about clients migrating from on-prem to the cloud, primarily from coretech market leaders who achieved rapid growth prior to 2015.

These ecosystem announcements surged in 2019 and 2020 along with a corresponding jump in insurtech funding (source: Gallagher RE Global InsurTech Report for Q1 2025). The number of cloud migration announcements also increased and has remained at higher levels than in prior years.

Figure 3. P&C Core Platform Announcements – Selections, Go-Lives, Expansions, Partners, and Cloud 2015 - 2025 Q1

Figure 4, below, shows these published events on a vendor-by-vendor basis (for those with at least 10 announcements over the past decade). One might assume that vendors with a lack of new wins are publicizing their services and tech partnerships to stay visible and relevant. This may be true in some cases, but Figure 4 shows that it is primarily vendors with the largest number of new deal announcements that are most active in promoting their partners.

Figure 4. P&C Core Platform Published Activity, 2015 - 2025 Q1

While Figure 4 provides an overview of coretech activity over the past decade, it does not capture how the market has evolved. There is a clear difference between vendors that were most active in the years leading up to 2020 and those that have been most active since. These differences are even more pronounced when viewed in different market segments, such as different premium tiers.

Table 1, below, organizes coretech vendor announcements by tier and compares announcements from the years prior to 2020 with announcements from 2020 through the first quarter of 2025. To help ensure relevance, only vendors with at least two announcements are shown for each tier.

Viewed as a whole, Table 1 illustrates broader trends covered in our previous market updates, such as fewer announced deals among larger insurers and an increasing number of deals with startups and insurers below $100M in premiums. It also shows how migrations from on-prem to cloud have increased among insurers with premiums above $100M.

Table 1. P&C Core Platform Published Announcements by Premium Tier, 2015 - 2025 Q1

Source: Coretech Insight, June 2025

Within each tier in Table 1, we also see how vendor composition and market positions have changed in the years after 2020. For example, among insurers with $100M or more in premiums, active vendors have been more concentrated, with few new vendors joining their ranks.

In contrast, the number of vendors announcing system selections and go-lives with startups and insurers below $100M in premiums increased significantly. The number of announcements in these tiers from 2020 on was nearly double that of previous years.

Across the board, there are significant differences in the top vendors for each tier. Some vendors have been less active in recent years while other new players have emerged and risen in the ranks. This reflects a slow but ongoing “changing of the guard” as coretech vendors either keep pace with industry changes and tech advances or fall behind and begin to be supplanted by more resilient competitors or compelling new market entrants.

Implications

These findings underscore the importance of ecosystems for both coretech buyers and providers. Ecosystems are especially relevant as advanced analytics and AI remain top priorities for buyers, and ecosystem partners are often the fastest and most practical way to incorporate new technologies into coretech platforms and daily operations. Buyers are increasingly factoring partner ecosystems into their coretech decisions. When core solution capabilities are similar, the breadth and maturity of ecosystems may be deciding factors.

Recommendations

Coretech solution providers: Publicize your collaboration with tech solution partners and professional services partners regularly. Ensure their offerings and capabilities are featured prominently on your website and in your marketing collateral as part of your broader ecosystem strategy and messaging.
Insurtechs: Make establishing partnerships with suitable coretech providers a top priority. These opportunities are mutually beneficial and will provide you with an accelerated path to market. Use this research to help identify coretech vendors aligned with your offerings and ideal customer profiles.
Coretech Buyers: Identify the premium tier (or tiers) that are most relevant for your organization and use this research to help validate your top contenders. Incorporate an evaluation of coretech ecosystems into your selection criteria, as this is a valuable indicator of both the breadth of capabilities and long-term viability for coretech solution providers.

Jeff Haner is the co-founder of Coretech Insight, an independent advisory firm.

For growth-stage insurance tech providers – from innovative coretechs to rising insurtechs – who need to stand out in a crowded market and accelerate customer acquisition, Coretech Insight provides product strategy and go-to-market services that capture the attention of buyers and speed up sales.

Jeff has served in senior IT, advisory, and marketing roles with Deloitte, Oliver Wyman, NJM Insurance Group, Gartner, and BriteCore. While with Gartner, he authored the Magic Quadrant for P&C Core Platforms. Jeff’s experience “on both sides” of the insurance technology table and his ongoing research enable him to offer deep insurance industry knowledge, strategic insights, and hands-on help to take action.

Contact Jeff at jeff.haner@coretechinsight.com

Note 1. Methodology

This research is part of Coretech Insight’s ongoing review of press releases (PRs) from P&C core platform vendors announcing the selection of their core platform or at least one core module (policy, billing, or claims) by US or Canadian customers. For this update, we broadened the scope of our review to include announcements for go-lives, expanded use, and the start and finish of on-prem to cloud migrations.

The PRs reviewed for this research were published from 1/1/2015 through Q1 2025 and featured on vendor websites and/or reported on by various wire services and news sites such as Business Wire, GlobeNewswire, PR Newswire, Insurance Innovation Reporter, and PropertyCasualty360.

Our objective with this review was to track buying activity and trends among insurance carriers and MGAs/MGUs. From the initial set of PRs we excluded:

PRs with no information on the timing of the events
PRs on customers that are not P&C insurance carriers, MGAs/MGUs, or other related P&C insurance entities
PRs on customers that are insolvent or no longer active

This review did not evaluate implementation timeframes or success rates — its focus was on the number and characteristics of selection decisions, go-lives, expansions, partnerships, and cloud migrations announced via press releases to gauge market activity and buying trends.

These public announcements do not reflect all new system selections or other vendor activities during this time period. For various reasons, such as client confidentiality, a conservative approach to promotion, or even a lack of marketing resources, vendors often do not publicize new wins, deployments, or other client activities We estimate these press releases cover 30 to 40% of all new P&C core platform selections, go-lives, and expansions with P&C insurance carriers, MGAs/MGUs, and other P&C entities during these years.

Although not a complete record of all deals, these announcements are valuable because they provide a public, verifiable record with details jointly approved by buyers and sellers. They represent a high-quality and consistent sample of activity in the P&C core platform market.

Early Indicators 2025 Q1 - The Importance of Ecosystems Grows with Fewer New Coretech Deals