Legacy thinking is breaking the back end of insurance - and Krishna Patel (pictured) says waiting for Gen Z to fix it is not a strategy. It’s an excuse.
As director of operations at Burns & Wilcox Canada and a featured speaker at this year’s Women in Insurance panel, Patel has watched legacy systems and rigid hiring practices collide with rising customer expectations. Policyholders now want a quote in five minutes, a policy in 10.
“It’s not just about speed - it’s about intelligence and adaptability,” she said.
That shift demands more than technical know-how. It calls for professionals who can design systems for real-time service, predictive tools, and continuous learning.
“The most critical operational skills gaps are really around technology and the evolving world,” Patel said. “Now it’s about thinking outside the box of insurance and designing systems optimally.”
Patel isn’t calling for more patience - she’s calling for a new playbook. Drawing from her own underwriting background, she argues real innovation comes from co-creation, cross-functional learning, and leadership that models change.
“It’s not just new systems,” she said. “It’s teaching people how to use them and why it matters.”
Part of the problem, she said, is structural. When operations, IT, and front-line teams operate in isolation, solutions get built for the wrong problems.
“It’s critical that ops, IT, and client-facing teams collaborate together,” Patel said.
She’s a believer in co-creation: tech teams build, client-facing staff validate, and operations streamline the workflow.
“That only works if everyone at the table understands what those needs actually are.”
Patel draws on her own path to make the case. She started in underwriting before moving into operations—an experience that exposed the blind spots baked into many insurance systems.
“Can I reduce the amount of clicks they have to do? Can I organize these forms so that they’re easier to pick and more natural, less likely to cause confusion?” she said. “Those are operational problems that only make sense if you’ve seen them up close.”
For Patel, solving the industry’s skills gap means letting go of the idea that new talent must come from within. She’s calling for a wider lens - one that includes professionals from project management, digital marketing, or tech ops. These are roles where change is constant, and innovation is a job requirement.
“The skills they bring in are transferable,” she said. “Even if they don’t have the insurance background.”
That broader hiring strategy can’t stop at the resume. Patel warned against over-relying on traditional indicators of polish or pedigree.
“It’s not limited to what a traditional good candidate in insurance used to be anymore,” she said.
Bias training for leadership, she added, should be mandatory.
“Organizations need to train their leaders on unconscious and conscious bias,” she said.
Patel also sees diversity and operational resilience as intertwined.
“Opening the candidate pool to those who may not have insurance experience, I think, is absolutely critical,” she said. “Can they adapt fast in an ever-evolving world? Can they think big picture instead of just focusing on the traditional career path?”
If insurance companies are serious about change, Patel thinks leadership needs to do more than fund innovation - they need to model it.
“It really starts at the top with leadership committing to making learning a priority,” she said.
At Burns & Wilcox, that commitment included a $100 million investment into Salesforce, designed to replace legacy systems and modernize data use across the company. But tech alone wasn’t the fix.
“It wasn’t just the new system - it was getting people to understand how to read the new data, how to then make a better business decision off of that,” she said.
That means constant learning, not just onboarding modules but dynamic, short form training that evolves alongside the work. Patel described a library of five- to 30-minute resources, complete with quizzes and badges to build momentum.
“If organizations can provide something like that, that gives employees a sense of success in learning,” she said.
Patel doesn’t believe the future of insurance operations lies in waiting for the next generation to step up. It lies in designing systems and workplaces that are ready for the world that’s already here.
Women in Insurance is designed to challenge the industry to move faster, think broader, and lead better. It’s where future-focused leaders like Patel are helping reimagine what operational resilience really looks like.
If you’re ready to stop waiting and start building, Women in Insurance is the place to be.
