An insurance firm stores claims in S3 Standard, needs automatic transition to cheaper storage after 90 days, immutable retention for 3 years, and deletion after 7 years to limit liability. Which lifecycle design automates cost savings with compliant retention?

The correct design succeeds because it maps each constraint to a native automated S3 control: Lifecycle transition after 90 days moves aging claims to a cheaper class such as Glacier to deliver cost savings without application changes, Object Lock with three-year retention provides WORM immutability that blocks overwrite or early delete for compliance, and Lifecycle expiration after seven years enforces disposal to limit liability. The alternative using transition after 90 days plus seven-year expiration without Object Lock achieves economy and cleanup but fails immutability by concept because standard Lifecycle versioning alone cannot prevent alteration during the mandatory three-year hold. The alternative using transition plus three-year Object Lock without expiration preserves savings and immutability but fails lifecycle governance because indefinite retention increases storage spend and legal exposure past the required seven-year deletion. The alternative keeping objects in S3 Standard with three-year Object Lock plus seven-year expiration meets retention and disposal but fails cost optimization because it never tiers data after 90 days. As an exam caveat, Object Lock requires versioning, Compliance mode, Governance mode, Legal Hold and retention duration behave differently, and expiration is suspended until retention expires so dates must nest correctly. As a practical check, enable versioning first, pilot rules on a test prefix, then verify transition dates, retain-until dates and expiration with S3 Inventory, CloudTrail and Storage Lens before production rollout.