Coming off the 2025 DEVHack and DEVSummits, I've had more conversations than ever with our industry partners, insurance CIOs, and product teams who are doubling down on cloud transformation, but struggling to modernize product design fast enough to keep pace with shifting market demands. That's why the momentum behind Advanced Product Designer right now is so real. We're seeing a tremendous investment in building cloud-native product agility, especially as carriers look to scale across global commercial lines adoption.
Over the past year, we've delivered significant enhancements across four major releases: Jasper, Kufri, Las Lenas, and Mammoth. Each release is purpose-built to accelerate product changes while preserving the control and governance of your business needs. Whether you're looking to expand into new markets, improve developer productivity, or streamline your product management processes, the latest features are designed to help your teams move faster, with confidence.
To help you get up to speed, we’ve rounded up the most common questions we’ve heard and answered them below.
Developer Experience & Technical Excellence: What’s New and Why It Matters
Q: What's the most significant improvement for my development teams in recent releases?
A: The enhanced git-based configuration lifecycle management in Jasper represents a major step forward for development team efficiency and satisfaction. This feature standardizes lifecycle management using git-based version control, which your developers already know and trust. It significantly improves IT auditability and traceability, critical factors for maintaining the compliance standards your organization requires. This modernization helps attract and retain the technical talent that's so challenging to find in today's market.
Q: How do these features help with talent retention and developer satisfaction?
A: The git-based configuration lifecycle and improved developer-friendly environment directly address your top concern: retaining technical talent. By providing tools that developers recognize and prefer, you're creating a more attractive work environment. The automation of low-value, high-impact development work through APD's code generation allows your team to focus on high-complexity, high-value activities that are more engaging and rewarding for experienced developers.
Business Agility & Market Responsiveness: Your Questions Answered
Q: How do the new conversion capabilities help us leverage our existing investments?
A: The early access conversion of non-APD products to APD feature addresses one of your biggest concerns: protecting existing technology investments while enabling cloud migration. This streamlined process allows you to convert existing non-APD products to be managed via APD without costly re-implementation or data migration. You can transition your lines of business while preserving your current investments, gaining the agility and easier product management that APD provides without starting from scratch.
Q: What new capabilities help us respond faster to market demands?
A: Several enhancements directly support your need to move quickly yet carefully. APD now syncs out-of-the-box typelists from PolicyCenter, ensuring consistency across systems while reducing manual effort. The improved product model management via APD APIs provides the flexibility needed to respond rapidly to regulatory updates and market opportunities.
Q: How do these updates support our multinational expansion plans?
A: The improved usability for adding missing currencies to product models in Jasper specifically supports multi-currency contract rates, making it easier to launch products in new international markets. Additionally, the Guidewire Marketplace now includes GO templates for Home and Motor lines tailored for EMEA jurisdictions, providing pre-built, region-specific product models that help you quickly enter new markets with compliant, localized products.
Product Innovation & Design Capabilities: Exploring the Latest Enhancements
Q: What enhancements improve our product design flexibility and depth?
A: Kufri introduced support for product, line, and risk level modifiers, giving your teams more granular control over product configurations. APD also now supports blanket coverages, enabling comprehensive coverage options that protect against multiple risks under a single policy. These capabilities allow you to create more sophisticated, tailored products that meet diverse customer needs across different brands, channels, and partners.
We have also delivered something product teams have asked for repeatedly - the ability for multithreaded edition management. This improves efficiency by enabling multiple users to safely work on different editions in parallel - reducing bottlenecks and helping larger teams ship changes faster.Accelerating Your Product Innovation Journey
These Advanced Product Designer enhancements reflect our understanding of the unique challenges our customers face. Each update is designed to help you balance the competing demands of speed and caution, innovation and compliance, business agility and operational excellence.
The combination of improved developer tools, enhanced business user capabilities, and strengthened cloud integration features provides a comprehensive platform for driving your product innovation strategy forward.
What's Coming Next: Converting Your Existing Non-APD Products to APD
One of the most significant developments in our APD roadmap addresses a critical concern for CIOs like you: protecting existing technology investments while enabling transformation. The conversion of non-APD products to APD, currently in Early Access, provides a clear path forward for lines of business established years ago using pre-APD tools.
Q: How does the conversion process protect our existing investments?
A: The conversion is designed as a one-time process that preserves your existing product model, data model, and Gosu configuration while making APD part of your design toolkit. Critically, this process requires no policy data migration or product refiling - addressing your need to move carefully while maintaining operational continuity. Your existing Cloud APIs remain intact, ensuring downstream systems experience no disruption, and no policy data migration required.
Q: What's the realistic timeline and effort required?
A: The conversion process typically takes 6-8 weeks per line of business, depending on complexity. This includes evaluation by Guidewire Professional Services, leveraging automation tooling for reverse engineering, code generation and transformation, and comprehensive validation and testing. The timeline balances thoroughness with efficiency - exactly the kind of careful yet progressive approach our customers need.
Q: How does this support our talent retention strategy?
A: Post-conversion, your development teams gain access to modern, visual product design tools while maintaining their existing expertise. Rather than requiring extensive retraining, the conversion enables your developers to leverage familiar Studio capabilities alongside new APD functionality. This hybrid approach helps retain institutional knowledge while providing the modern tools that attract and retain technical talent.
Q: What are the immediate benefits after conversion?
A: Once converted, you can manage future product changes through APD's visual Mind Map interface, create product editions for different markets or channels, and leverage enhanced rule-building capabilities. Most importantly, you gain access to autogenerated Cloud APIs that enable capabilities like Jutro digital experiences and Integration Gateway connections, accelerating your broader digital transformation initiatives.
The conversion capability represents our commitment to providing clear pathways that respect your existing investments while enabling the agility and innovation your business demands.
Ready to explore how these Advanced Product Designer updates can accelerate your product development initiatives? Contact your Guidewire representative to schedule a demonstration of the latest capabilities and discuss how they align with your strategic technology roadmap. Our insurance-specific solutions are designed to deliver the efficiency and financial impact you need while ensuring compliance and reducing risk.