PegaWorld 2026, held last week in Las Vegas, brought together business and technology leaders from across industries to share how their organizations are navigating modernization, automation and AI initiatives.

Throughout the event, several customer speakers took the stage to discuss real-world transformation efforts, lessons learned and the challenges of balancing innovation with operational realities. One of those organizations was Unum Group.

During the keynote presentation, Shelia Anderson, the executive VP and chief information and digital officer at Unum Group, shared how the company is approaching transformation across its technology landscape.

Rather than viewing decades of legacy systems as an obstacle, Unum sees modernization as an opportunity to improve customer experiences, accelerate innovation and prepare for the next generation of capabilities.

Following her keynote, I sat down with Anderson to discuss the company’s transformation journey, lessons learned and advice for other business leaders embarking on similar initiatives.

Building a foundation before modernizing

For a little background info, Unum is a 175-year-old insurance company that provides workplace benefits, including short-term disability, long-term disability, leave and absence management, and voluntary benefits such as accident and cancer policies.

Serving millions of customers, the company has spent the past year taking a hard look at its technology environment and identifying where modernization efforts could deliver the greatest impact.

According to Anderson, one of the discoveries she made after joining the company was the need to better understand the existing technology landscape before making significant investments.

While many organizations rush toward AI initiatives, Unum began with foundational work. The company focused on strengthening architectural governance, evaluating application portfolios, and gaining visibility into technology costs and lifecycle management.

The goal was to create a roadmap for future decision-making rather than simply replacing systems for the sake of modernization.

“We had a need to really focus on the large amount of legacy modernization that was needed,” Anderson explained.

That effort included reducing duplication across technologies and determining which applications should continue receiving investment and which had reached the end of their useful life.

Tackling legacy challenges

One area receiving particular attention involves core systems built on mainframe and COBOL technologies. Anderson emphasized that the systems continue to perform their intended function, processing millions of claims efficiently.

The challenge is not that the technology has stopped working. Instead, the company recognized that older platforms can limit the ability to take advantage of emerging technologies and future innovation opportunities.

So, as part of a broader modernization strategy, Unum launched a proof-of-concept initiative with Pega and AWS to explore how legacy business logic could be transformed into a more modern architecture.

The effort also serves as a test case for broader modernization initiatives across the organization.

Because Unum already utilized Pega for case management and maintained an extensive relationship with AWS across multiple business functions, the partnership presented a natural opportunity to evaluate new approaches while leveraging existing expertise.

The reality of transformation

As with most transformation initiatives, the journey has not been without challenges. Anderson said one of the biggest hurdles has been integrating modern technologies with legacy environments.

“One of the biggest challenges is always that it’s easy to create that new capability. When you have to start connecting, doing what I like to call backwards integration into existing technologies that may not have readily defined APIs, for example, and you’re connecting into those legacy databases – that’s where you have slowdown. That’s the same with anything that you do,” Anderson said.

Legacy systems often lack modern APIs and require organizations to build connections into older databases and infrastructure. Those integrations can slow projects and introduce additional complexity.

Another challenge involves people rather than technology.

Anderson highlighted the importance of educating engineering teams, developing new skills, and helping business stakeholders understand the capabilities being introduced.

She believes organizations must involve business teams early and often.

“It’s very different than old ways of working,” she said.

Rather than operating as separate groups, technology and business teams increasingly need to work side by side to reimagine workflows and rapidly iterate on new solutions.

Data and AI go hand in hand

While modernization remains a major focus, Anderson acknowledged that AI is currently one of the most active areas of innovation within the company.

Unum has already implemented AI-assisted capabilities in claims processing and is exploring additional agentic AI opportunities across the business.

However, she cautioned against treating AI as a standalone strategy.

“The quality of your AI is going to be totally dependent upon the quality of your data and the readiness of your data,” Anderson said.

To address this, Unum has aligned its data and AI efforts under a unified organizational structure. The goal is to ensure that data quality, governance and AI innovation evolve together rather than operating in separate silos.

Early results show promise

Although the Pega initiative remains in its early stages, Anderson shared examples of the improvements already being observed.

A claims intake workflow that previously required users to interact with seven different systems and touchpoints has been consolidated into a single guided workflow.

The change simplifies the experience for both employees and customers while creating opportunities for greater efficiency.

Claims specialists can spend less time navigating systems and more time handling claims. Customers benefit from a more streamlined experience and fewer requests for the same information.

The company also expects improvements in customer satisfaction, productivity and operational efficiency as the solution continues to mature.

Advice for business leaders

When asked what advice she would offer other organizations pursuing transformation, Anderson’s answer was clear.

“Start with, where do you want to be as a business?” she said.

Rather than beginning with technology selection, she recommends defining business goals first and identifying the outcomes that matter most.

At Unum, technology investments are tied directly to business objectives and shared success metrics.

“We start with business first,” Anderson said.

That philosophy helps ensure accountability across the organization while keeping transformation efforts focused on measurable business value rather than technology for technology’s sake.

Enterprise Times Take

Many organizations talk about modernization, but fewer take the disciplined approach Unum appears to be following. Rather than leading with AI, Anderson and her team have focused on creating the foundational architecture, governance and data capabilities needed to support long-term transformation.

The company’s willingness to tackle legacy modernization head-on while simultaneously preparing for future AI opportunities reflects a pragmatic strategy that many enterprises can learn from.

The post Unum Group Modernizes for the Future with Business-First Transformation appeared first on Enterprise Times.