How Prudential is leveraging AI and Kong AI Gateway to transform legacy application modernization
Liz Brand, VP & Global Head of Cloud at Prudential took the stage at API Summit 2025 to share their approach to modernization in the AI era.
The Traditional Approach - 8 Years Ago:
Multi-year modernization projects with high capital investment
Had to pick high-value targets and prioritize
Many legacy applications were left behind because they were too difficult, complex, or costly to modernize
Limited scalability—only got to a certain number of applications over the years
Data centers were still full of legacy applications waiting to be modernized
The New Approach in the AI Era:
Prudential is "leaning full all in on agentic code development" with the following strategies:
Refactoring Legacy Apps: Using AI to understand applications that haven't been looked at in years—discovering what they don't even know about them
Application Decomposition: Breaking down applications into smaller components (microservices with significant agent layers on top)
Eliminating Duplication: Finding and removing duplicate APIs across the ecosystem to reduce complexity
Tackling Hard Problems: Now have the tools to take on the difficult, complex applications previously left behind
Key Themes
This is a "wipe the slate clean" moment like cloud was a decade ago
Creates an opportunity to obsessively learn and relearn problems
Companies in the successful 5% will be those that relentlessly pursue different solutions
The winning companies will "change the next decade of our technology"
"It's amazing to see all the advancements with Kong AI Gateway in the last year. It's really a transformative product that you guys have put out there."
— Elizabeth Brand, VP & Global Head of Cloud, Prudential