The Centre for Study of Insurance Operations (CSIO) has announced that its Innovation and Emerging Technology (INNOTECH) Advisory Committee and Application Programming Interface (API) Working Group have finalized the business requirements for creating an insurance quote.
According to a release, CSIO’s Working Group built upon the foundation it had established in 2021, when it defined the policy inquiry business requirements for four lines of business: personal automobile and habitational insurance, individually rated commercial automobile (IRCA) and commercial general liability (CGL).
But now, the Group has completed business requirements for three more use cases for these lines of businesses: a broker creating a quote, submitting the quote to the insurer, and receiving the rated quote from the insurer.
For the next step, the Technical Working Group will use the requirements to create the API Standards utilizing Java Script Object Notation (JSON). Once it is finalized, the standards will be published on the CSIO website. Both insurers and vendors can program the standards to enhance the quoting process with their broker partners, since the standards allow large amounts of information to immediately transfer between insurers’ systems and broker management systems (BMS).
This achievement is the team’s first since the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada (IBAC) began cooperating with INNOTECH earlier this year, integrating the IBAC Data Exchange (DX) initiative into CSIO’s 2022 API roadmap.
“Representation from all stakeholder groups in P&C insurance is crucial to our success as brokers. Knowledgeable IBAC representatives teaming up with talented insurer and vendor members has helped the INNOTECH API Working Group produce even more impressive results,” said INNOTECH committee member and InsureLine Brokers president and CEO Aly Kanji. “Having APIs that can be consumed by brokers, insurers and software vendors alike will move the insurance industry forward and produce benefits that will position the industry for mutual success for years to come.”
