A leading Tinubu customer has long been a prominent player in the Surety market. With the industry projected to grow by 38% over the next five years — reaching $27 billion by 2029, with North America capturing 45% of the market* — this company is strategically positioning itself for continued expansion. To seize this opportunity, carriers are increasingly modernizing their technology infrastructure, often moving away from legacy systems.
After facing challenges with other vendors, the company selected Tinubu to support its end-to-end Contract and Commercial Surety Bonds lifecycle. This involved a large-scale data migration encompassing over 300,000 bonds and 2 million transactions.
A Strategic Partnership for Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is essential for Surety providers aiming to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and remain competitive. Established carriers recognize the need for modern, scalable platforms to maintain their edge.
Before engaging with Tinubu, the customer spent years trying to transition to another platform but encountered significant roadblocks. They’re not alone: more than 70% of new Tinubu customers since 2020 have come to us after failed implementations.
This customer required a partner with in-depth expertise — one capable of navigating complex historical data and mapping it to a new platform, enabling the full retirement of their legacy system.
“The team is great to work with. They know their business, and they’re passionate about it. It has been a pleasure to help them on this journey – and quite gratifying to see them transacting on the new system.”
— Gina Cervini, Data Migration Architect at Tinubu
Although the project involved many interdependent moving parts, several key factors helped keep it on track and ensure a successful outcome:
1. Comprehensive Data Migration
Before partnering with Tinubu, the customer attempted to transition to a competitor’s platform but encountered challenges due to complex migration requirements and system limitations. Their historical data was on a legacy system with inconsistent formatting and data anomalies, which is often the case for large, long-established Surety carriers. Tinubu’s team collaborated closely with subject matter experts to cleanse, validate, and map the data.
This included:
- Standardizing a significant volume of underwriting questions and preserving all historical responses.
- Ensuring proper mapping of bond transactions to the new system.
- Migrating extensive financial and work-in-progress data to maintain underwriting accuracy.
- Syncing migration timelines precisely with their financial reporting cycles.
This was Tinubu’s largest data migration to date — and most importantly, the customer was happy with the outcome. Tinubu helped align their data with modern system requirements – ensuring configurations, underwriting history, and financial records were transferred.
Without a well-executed migration, customers risk bringing over incomplete or incorrect data, which can lead to failed transactions, compliance issues, and inefficiencies in automation.
Data Migration by the Numbers:
- Over 300,000 bonds and extensive underwriting history transferred seamlessly without data loss or disruption
- 3,000+ agencies
- 200k+ client accounts
- 11,000+ users
- 2 million+ historical transactions
- 40+ core database entities loaded to support underwriting questions
2. Configurations for System Scalability
Larger, established Surety carriers generally require more customizations to launch. They are highly user-centric and want to ensure the platform is intuitive for key stakeholders while maintaining operational efficiency at scale. Tinubu worked closely with the customer to tailor the platform to their needs – leveraging a mix of existing integrations and customizations to ensure long-term scalability. Among the most important configurations were:
- Advanced Configuration Support: The Tinubu platform supports thousands of unique bond configurations – demonstrating its ability to handle enterprise-scale complexity while accommodating customized workflows and underwriting processes.
- New Payment Processor Integration: Tinubu successfully integrated CyberSource, a new payment processor, ensuring secure and efficient financial transactions.
- Role-Based User Experience: Given the Partner’s vast network of agents, underwriters, and financial teams, Tinubu implemented advanced user role configurations. This ensured that various stakeholders had tailored access, reducing complexity and improving usability and efficiency.
- Seamless System Interoperability: To ensure a cohesive digital ecosystem, Tinubu facilitated integrations with the Customer’s existing enterprise systems, third-party risk assessment tools, and financial reporting applications, reducing manual intervention and enhancing automation capabilities.
3. Collaborative & Phased Implementation
While this customer opted for a “Big Bang” migration [migrating all data at once], the onboarding process prioritized collaboration and iterative testing. A dedicated Tinubu migration expert worked closely with their business and IT teams to ensure platform configurations met operational requirements.
Tinubu facilitated multiple rounds of UAT testing using real-world cases – enabling the customer to validate data accuracy, test system functionality, and address edge cases before final deployment. This combination of testing with frequent team checkpoints ensured continuous feedback, proactive issue resolution, and real-time adjustments to optimize performance. Additionally, to ensure full operational readiness, Tinubu enabled parallel testing. The customer ran simulations in the new system while continuing operations in the legacy system, identifying and addressing discrepancies.
“Big Bang” Data Migration: Why It Made Sense
Tinubu partners closely with each customer to understand their unique needs and provide guidance aligned with their business goals. In this case, the customer chose a full-scale migration over a phased approach for several key reasons:
- Avoids Complexity – Staggered or phased migrations can create operational headaches, requiring companies to manage multiple systems. Running old and new systems in parallel can lead to inefficiencies and increased costs. With a full migration, companies can decommission old systems quickly, eliminating redundant infrastructure and preventing data inconsistencies.
- Reduces Resource Drain – Multiple migration phases demand repeated investments of time, personnel, and financial resources. A single migration consolidates these efforts, allowing teams to focus on platform adoption and optimization.
- Enhances Adoption & Buy-In – A partial migration risks users continuing to rely on the legacy system, slowing down adoption and reducing ROI.
- Provides a Competitive Advantage – Moving to a modern platform in one go means companies can quickly leverage automation, reporting, and integrations that their competitors may be struggling to implement.
The Results: A Successful Digital Surety Transformation
This customer’s transition to Tinubu’s Surety Platform marks a significant milestone in their digital transformation journey. With a fully integrated, scalable, and efficient platform, they can capitalize on the growing Surety industry for years to come. Their data quality is much improved, operations more streamlined, and their team is empowered with a modern solution built for the future.
This partnership underscores Tinubu’s expertise in executing complex migrations, delivering tailored solutions, and supporting large carriers in navigating the evolving digital landscape.
*According to the “Insurance Marketplace Realities 2024 Spring Update – Surety” by WTW
