Outage Shakes Life & Annuity Carriers, Raising New Risk Questions

The iPipeline outage over Labor Day weekend had a significant impact on Life & Annuity (L&A) carriers, shutting down new business operations for over 30 hours. Although the outage lacked the global scope of a security breach like CrowdStrike, its effects were particularly severe for carriers with no backup processes in place. The incident highlights the increasing risks tied to reliance on third-party technology platforms in insurance operations. CIOs from multiple carriers quickly banded together to initiate disaster recovery and business continuity efforts, using collaborative Zoom sessions to share insights and mitigate the disruption. The outage was resolved successfully, but it raised concerns about how carriers would respond if a similar event occurred during critical business periods like year-end.

As insurance carrier technology ecosystems grow more complex, the dependency on third-party vendors—some owned by private equity firms—adds new layers of risk, especially when service disruptions occur. With technology environments continuing to evolve, carriers must brace for future challenges. The lessons from this outage will likely shape risk management strategies and contingency planning in the future.