BizCover, the insurance service that offers online policy comparisons, recently launched a new microservice platform for its directly sold offerings. The launch by the Sydney headquartered firm followed 18 months of work and represented a shift from using monolithic IT architecture.
“We wanted to build out something that was scalable for the future and where we could attract the right talent, build products very quickly and just be an insurer tech leader,” said Justin Goldberg (pictured), BizCover’s head of engineering.
The change from a monolith to a microservice platform is a major move for the company. The monolith platform dates to 2008 when BizCover started its Australia operations.
“When I started at BizCover three years ago we had a platform that serviced the business well up until that point, but it was showing signs of age,” said Goldberg.
For example, he said, it was taking a bit more time to get changes through the system and becoming trickier for his IT team to work on efficiently.
“We made a very big decision at the time to actually build a new platform from the ground up, which in most situations you would never think of doing,” he said.
One issue with this approach, said Goldberg, is that a new system has no backwards compatibility.
“But we still felt confident,” he said.
Microservice and monolithic are two ways of building IT architecture.
Monolithic platforms are built as a single, indivisible unit that usually comprises a user interface, server application and a database all stacked on top of each other. Tech experts say monolithic architecture has difficulty scaling up and incorporating new products.
“If you’re a start-up, though, there’s nothing wrong with a monolithic approach to a problem because monoliths are good for when you don’t really understand the domain well and you’re still trying to figure things out,” said Goldberg.
He said it’s a very quick way of building out an application.
“But as it scales and as you grow your business, having a micro service architecture just gives you a lot more flexibility,” he said.
This includes, he said, making changes, replacing things that aren’t fit for purpose, integrating with third parties and testing.
“[Today] Pretty much all of tech would be following the microservice approach,” said Goldberg.
The BizCover engineering boss said building the microservice platform showed him how complex the insurance domain really is “under the covers.”
“So there’s a lot of rules which I think you can take for granted, but when you start digging into the details there’s a lot more complexity that comes up as a result,” he said.
One of the challenges, he said, was having people on hand with the insurance domain knowledge to help ensure they built the platform correctly.
“We didn’t want to build a system that assumed the wrong things or was built in a way that wasn’t flexible for the future,” said Goldberg.
This approach meant Goldberg and his team were constantly questioning and testing their own build process.
“We always tried to question things and probe things to see what would happen,” he said. “For example, what’s happening from the customer’s perspective? Do they really see things like referrals? And if they do, how do we investigate those and how do we present that to the insurers to give them quotes that we can bind through?” said Goldberg.
Initially, the new platform is being used for professional indemnity (PI) and public liability insurance offerings for a set of occupations.
“We are also adding different question types that will allow us to add more products and occupations on to the platform and transition customers over to Blaze from the current platform,” said Goldberg.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a modern platform for a growing business,” he added.
In November, BizCover announced its expansion into South Africa. The move added to the insurtech’s offerings in Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
“Our expansion into South Africa was one of opportunity,” said Michael Gottlieb, BizCover’s CEO.
The launch was in partnership with Hollard Insurance Company and Discovery Insure.
The BizCover CEO is no stranger to South Africa. More than 20 years ago, Gottlieb’s early career as a physiotherapist brought him into close contact with the country. For the 1998 FIFA World Cup he cared for South Africa’s players as the team physio. In the early 2000s, he started Mega Capital Insurance Brokers with business partner Donner. BizCover followed in 2008.
