(Boston Mutual Life building in Canton, Mass. Source: Boston Mutual Life.)
For Grant Ward, technology transformation at Boston Mutual Life begins with an acknowledgment about how the company had done business in the past.
“We have forced the customers to adapt to the way we operate,” says Ward, President and CEO, Boston Mutual Life Insurance Company (BML; Canton, Mass.).
BML Connect, the carrier’s new business platform, is intended to change that relationship. Its expansion to 49 states in early August 2026 marks a milestone in a broader effort to bring the company’s operations into line with the expectations of brokers, employers and policyholders. Ward’s ambitions extend through the technology to the way employees work, the products the carrier offers and the opportunities it can pursue.
Ward became President and CEO in January 2026 after serving as President and COO. In preparing for the role, he returned to McKinsey senior partners’ book CEO Excellence and a principle that matched his own thinking: reframe how the company will win. Boston Mutual Life Insurance Company
Boston Mutual Life’s earlier Vision 2025 strategy emphasized being a carrier of choice, making the company easy to do business with and enabling employees to work from anywhere. Ward frames the next stage around empowering a customer-minded workforce, improving customer experience through technology and using those advances to fuel growth.
“So the technology is right in the middle, literally in the middle of how to reframe the priorities that we have as a company today,” he says.
The distinction is in the direction of the investment. Technology has long been important to Boston Mutual Life, Ward observes, recalling a company document from its centennial that discussed the need to respond to technological change. The emphasis now is on what that investment brings to the customer.
A Platform Customers Can Use
Asked whether BML Connect is primarily a policy administration system or a broader business platform, Ward first offers a lawyer’s observation: “That’s almost a leading question.”
His answer is nevertheless clear.
“A policy admin system, a customer doesn’t know what that is,” he says. “It is a platform, and a platform speaks to that customer.”
BML Connect brings enrollment, billing, commissions, case management, policy administration and service into an integrated environment. Brokers, employers and policyholders have self-service access to information and functions relevant to their roles.
Ward illustrates the change with familiar sources of service friction. A policyholder who misplaces a paper policy previously needed to contact the carrier for a replacement. A broker seeking information about a block of business had to request a report. On the new platform, both can access their information online.
He also sees a future in which brokers can communicate with Boston Mutual Life’s platform through their own systems. That connectivity remains ahead; for now, brokers work through BML Connect.
The platform currently supports new business for workplace whole life, accident, critical illness and simplified group voluntary term life. Those products were the initial priority because they represent the carrier’s core offerings, including products it sells to small businesses.
The carrier began its pilot in July 2025 with a small number of New England brokers. Finding suitable cases proved more complicated than expected, Ward says, and the pilot identified bugs that Boston Mutual Life and its supplier, Majesco (Morristown, N.J.), worked to resolve before expanding availability.
The early results give Ward evidence of the platform’s value. He reports policy issuance as 50 percent faster and quoting as roughly 75 percent faster than under the legacy systems. In follow-up information, Boston Mutual Life reports that brokers with new business on BML Connect receive their first commission about 65 percent faster after enrollment ends.
For quoting, Ward points to straight-through processing within parameters the carrier establishes. Speed has a direct bearing on the carrier’s ability to compete for broker business.
“If we’re waiting a day or two to get a quote while someone can get it in an hour or two, that’s a major difference,” he says.
Avoiding a New Version of the Old System
Boston Mutual Life issued its RFPs in 2022 and contracted with Majesco in 2023. Ward says the attraction included the prospect of supporting the business from quote through claims without assembling additional modules and bolt-ons.
The carrier also sought a supplier with which it would have a meaningful voice in the development of the solution. Ward describes collaboration as a process of reconciling the vendor’s ideas about how work can be done with the carrier’s understanding of its business.
Throughout that process, Boston Mutual Life has emphasized using standard functionality.
“What we did not want to do was to configure it so much that it ended up looking like our legacy system,” Ward says.
That principle reaches beyond system design. Bringing BML Connect into operation requires employees to adjust their own practices, while the carrier must accommodate customers who are not yet ready to move to the platform.
Grant D. Ward Sr., President and COO, Boston Mutual Insurance Company.
Ward acknowledges the temptation to require everyone buying an eligible product to use BML Connect. The company’s aim is eventually to bring everyone onto the platform, but it continues to offer other ways of doing business in recognition of current customer needs.
The same consideration shapes its approach to existing customers. The company is undertaking a complex, multiyear conversion of all existing business from legacy systems. Ward regards migration as essential, while recognizing the work involved in both converting policies and helping policyholders understand a different experience.
“Migration is absolutely part of the roadmap,” he says. “As any CEO of a legacy company will tell you, it’s harder and it takes more time than you think it will.”
An existing customer should not have to navigate the legacy environment and the new platform simultaneously, he adds. Keeping that customer in a familiar environment during the transition is preferable to creating a divided experience.
Bringing the Workforce Along
Ward’s account builds on the organizational foundations described in IIR’s earlier conversations with Boston Mutual Life executives. Dedicated teams, infrastructure and execution discipline have helped the carrier work through difficulties on the way to the national rollout, he says.
Creating dedicated program teams also makes it necessary to bring the rest of the company along. Over the past six to nine months, Boston Mutual Life has increased opportunities for employees to see what the system can do. Employees familiar with the previous work explain how the new capabilities address tasks that used to be difficult.
Ward complements those demonstrations with a message about the changes required of employees themselves.
“We have to adjust our mindset, we have to adjust the way we work,” he says. “And adjustment and resilience will be a key part of our success going forward.”
Fewer than 10 employees currently service new cases on BML Connect. As more business moves to the platform, the company is preparing a larger group to support it. Boston Mutual Life has assessed employees’ capabilities and areas where they need additional knowledge, and is developing training content based on those assessments.
The carrier’s mutual structure helps support that investment, Ward says. Boston Mutual Life committed people to the transformation programs and backfilled their roles rather than making the work a part-time responsibility. Its financial strength enabled it to absorb the expense.
Growth With a Human Touch
Additional products and claims support are among the capabilities still to come. Disability products will help round out the platform’s offerings and support the eventual conversion of existing business.
Boston Mutual Life Office in Omaha. Source: BML. (Click to enlarge.)
BML Connect also removes a distribution constraint. As brokerage operations grow, Ward says, more people may contribute to a sale and need to share in compensation. Legacy systems limited the number who could be included; the new platform supports more flexible arrangements and commission splits.
Product expansion starts with a similar examination of customer needs. Ward points to hospital indemnity as an offering under consideration, while emphasizing that the carrier must first determine whom it wants to serve and what those customers want. He expects continued discussions with Majesco about incorporating prospective products into its standard model.
AI is at an earlier stage. Boston Mutual Life is devoting resources to learning and strategy development, including sending two employees through a Wharton program. Ward expects that work to become an integral part of the company’s 2027 strategy. The carrier is also evaluating how to use embedded AI tools and data for actionable insights.
His interest in faster answers and better service comes with a commitment to retaining access to people, especially for the workers Boston Mutual Life protects.
“There’s a place for AI to augment that,” Ward says. “But I’d like to believe that as much as possible we want to keep humans as part of that mix.”
That places the next stage of transformation within the same framework as the current one: understand the customer’s needs, then determine how the company must change to meet them.
“Now we can say, what does it bring to the customer?” Ward says. “That’s the difference.”