Life and annuity products can remain in force for decades. The administration system underneath them has to support product change, transaction integrity, financial control, and new digital experiences, and is designed to keep routine updates from becoming engineering projects.
PAS modernization is about more than hosting. Buyers need to know how quickly products can change, how safely rules are governed, how transactions are recorded, and how the core connects to the rest of the insurance stack.
Configure product structures, rates, riders, funds, transactions, and rules with governed control.
Use shared calculation logic across supported new-business, illustration, and in-force administration workflows where configured.
Maintain traceable transaction records designed to support carrier audit and financial-control processes.
Connect distribution, underwriting, servicing, finance, and data through modern APIs.
Zahara is Zinnia’s policy administration system for building, testing, launching, and servicing life and annuity products on modern infrastructure.
POLICY ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM
A cloud-native PAS built around configurable product components, a multi-purpose calculation engine, modern APIs, real-time event processing, and a distributed ledger.
CONFIGURATION LAYER
A configuration control center designed to reduce the need for code-based changes for carrier and product setup, rules, workflows, correspondence, and governed change.
Admin Console can reduce reliance on engineering for routine configuration changes while preserving role-based control and approval. Product, actuarial, compliance, and implementation teams can work within governed workflows, reducing reliance on manual or spreadsheet-based handoffs.
The intended operational benefit is to shift more onboarding work from engineering-heavy, spreadsheet-based setup into guided, reviewed, and traceable configuration.
Compare platforms on change, control, integration, and how well the system holds up over the life of the product.
How are rates, riders, funds, product rules, correspondence, and transaction logic configured? Separate routine business change from work that truly requires engineering.
Look for approvals, version history, contributor roles, preview, rollback, and change history, and confirm how each control is implemented against your own governance requirements.
Evaluate traceability, reconciliation, GL connections, cash controls, and how policy values and changes are recorded in a way designed to support the carrier’s audit and regulatory review processes.
Which service requests and policy changes can the PAS process in real time through supported integrations? Map APIs and events across new business, underwriting, portals, documents, finance, and data.
A modern core still needs a credible implementation path. Evaluate coexistence, conversion, testing, reconciliation, cutover, and business continuity during the transition.
Policy administration holds the policy record, but it should not absorb every adjacent workflow. Distribution, underwriting, servicing, finance, and fund operations need clear connections to the core.
New business arrives from distribution and the order-entry workflow.
Underwriting and issue decisions complete before the policy record is established.
The policy record, product configuration, and transaction history are held in the core under the carrier’s configured governance controls.
Service requests and self-service experiences can interact with the policy record through supported real-time integrations.
Financial control, reconciliation, and separate-account processing connect back to the core.
Zahara sits inside Zinnia’s insurance platform business, which administers life and annuity assets for carrier clients. These figures describe that business as a whole, not Zahara alone.
Figures: Zinnia internal data. Carrier blocks of business are counted per administered block on Zinnia insurance platforms as of 2025 (26 blocks across 22 top-level carrier organizations). Asset growth is the change in life and annuity assets administered for insurance-platform clients from January to December 2024 (approx. $178B to $192B, about 8%), and includes market movement as well as net flows.
Zahara can support the target-state administration model for new products or a broader modernization program. Zinnia Launch provides product-build context around the core, while Legacy Modernization & Conversion addresses coexistence, migration, reconciliation, and cutover.
Product-build context around the core, from product design through deployment.
Coexistence, migration, reconciliation, and cutover on the path to the target state.
A digital layer for policy visibility, service transactions, authorization, workflow, and status above the system of record.
Unitization, pricing, trade execution, reconciliation, fees, and reporting for separate-account assets.
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Whether the goal is a new product launch, PAS replacement, or a modern target state alongside existing systems, evaluate how the core handles product change, transaction control, and lifecycle connections.
