5 Ways To Use APIs In Your Insurance Business

Posted by Bridge netins on December 2nd, 2019

There's no denying that, customer service and the customer experience are becoming an important competitive differentiator in the insurance industry. Furthermore, adopting an API strategy can definitely enhance the insurance digital end to end experience and deliver better customer satisfaction. API, otherwise known as Application Programming Interface, connects IT systems and applications together, allowing them to use one another's functionality. Using application programming interface in insurance can serve different purposes and business opportunities with the chance of bringing with it cost-efficiency and flexibility for selling as well as managing insurance products. Moreover, APIs provide quick, efficient access to back-end systems and let you introduce a product without disrupting legacy systems. In addition, utilizing shared data reduces duplicate efforts and speeds time to market. Besides, you can find a plethora of companies offering APIs for automobile insurance companies among others.

Furthermore, APIs help insurance companies deliver better customer experience thanks to third-party partnerships. Read on to find out five ways to use APIs in your insurance business.

1. Partnering- APIs can help make it easy for partners to do business with you. Furthermore, providing APIs to partners- banks, auto dealerships, lawyers, real estate agents, service and repair shops, travel companies among others, enables them to deliver offerings and services for your clients or give insurance information to their clients. Besides, this approach is well suited to generating new revenue streams from referral fees or monetization share.

2. Online insurance sales- One of the most common uses of APIs in the insurance business is online insurance sales. To do that one usually needs, a front-end (website or app) the customer can access and a back-end system with the capability to calculate premiums, produce the relevant documents as well as account files and most importantly store all the policy data for reporting and account keeping. Where API comes into play is that it makes the front-end talk to the back end and allows pushing or pulling of data as needed.

3. Office workflow- As in every business, productivity and efficiency are critical in any insurance company. Furthermore, the ability to complete tasks faster, to save time and effort, not only means less work but also frees up more time for agents as well as customer service reps to spend collaborating with clients to properly understand their needs. With something as simple as writing an auto policy, an agent may start and end the process in the two pieces of software- first in the agency management system and then in the underwriting system. This requires the agent to toggle back and forth, rekey data and perhaps even hand off the process to another individual. With API integration, the data is entered once, moves through the entire process with an electronic handoff from one system to another, can even be picked up by a second individual seamlessly.

4. Data and analytics- Insurance companies gather large amounts of data about their clients and often perform analysis for identifying marketing opportunities. Generally, the activities target a specific internal audience. Through APIs, insurance companies can make data and analytics more easily available to other internal audiences and realize additional value from data that has already been collected.

5. Device integration and wearable devices- Another common use of APIs is device integration and wearable devices. Furthermore, the vehicle insurance industry is already using devices for monitoring a driver's behavior and driving habits. Furthermore, these devices use APIs to communicate the data to the insurance company; the company then rewards safer driving and low mileage through lower premiums.

While these were some of the ways to use APIs in your insurance business, there are many others, such as client communication via chat, fraud detection, client self-service for FNOL and claims management among many others. Besides, you can find numerous companies offering APIs for automobile insurance comapnies among others. At the end of the day, API integrations clearly benefit the entire insurance value chain, from carriers, underwriters and agencies to customers.