Hi John
Sorry for my delay in responding. I’ll give you some context that will hopefully help you (and others) with your hack.
Today (in general) insurance policies are developed and distributed through an insurance company or their sales distribution channels (insurance agents and insurance brokers).
There are many components and activities in issuing and managing insurance policies but in this hack, we are providing you with the main two (the rating and the policy generation):
Rating API: To obtain insurance, you provide an insurance carrier, agent or broker with information on what it is you want to insure (your car, house or business), its characteristics (where its located, its value) and what coverages you want to insure it for (fire, theft, water damage etc). The insurance company uses this info and performs mathematical calculations to determine how much you should pay for your insurance (this is called your “premium”).
Policy PDF Generation API: If you accept that premium and want the insurance, they issue you an insurance policy (physical document or PDF) that contains information on what it is your insuring, how much you need to pay, and the terms and conditions of what your insurance policy covers.
In the past the only way an insurance policy was rated and issued was either manually or through a monolithic policy administration technology platform that was used only by the insurance company or their agents / brokers. Today Insurance companies and us (the buyers of insurance) are demanding not only new ways to sell/buy insurance but new insurance products that are designed for today’s world.
1 comment
Carol McKenzie Manager • almost 8 years ago
Hi John
Sorry for my delay in responding. I’ll give you some context that will hopefully help you (and others) with your hack.
Today (in general) insurance policies are developed and distributed through an insurance company or their sales distribution channels (insurance agents and insurance brokers).
There are many components and activities in issuing and managing insurance policies but in this hack, we are providing you with the main two (the rating and the policy generation):
Rating API: To obtain insurance, you provide an insurance carrier, agent or broker with information on what it is you want to insure (your car, house or business), its characteristics (where its located, its value) and what coverages you want to insure it for (fire, theft, water damage etc). The insurance company uses this info and performs mathematical calculations to determine how much you should pay for your insurance (this is called your “premium”).
Policy PDF Generation API: If you accept that premium and want the insurance, they issue you an insurance policy (physical document or PDF) that contains information on what it is your insuring, how much you need to pay, and the terms and conditions of what your insurance policy covers.
In the past the only way an insurance policy was rated and issued was either manually or through a monolithic policy administration technology platform that was used only by the insurance company or their agents / brokers. Today Insurance companies and us (the buyers of insurance) are demanding not only new ways to sell/buy insurance but new insurance products that are designed for today’s world.
Check out this article from McKinsey that discusses this shift: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/insurance-beyond-digital-the-rise-of-ecosystems-and-platforms
So back to our Hack:
In this hack we are giving you APIs to rate (calculate the premiums) and issue policies (generate the policy documents) for Travel insurance, (https://www.moneycrashers.com/what-is-travel-insurance-need-to-buy/), Professional Liability (https://www.irmi.com/term/insurance-definitions/professional-liability) and Renters insurance (https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/insurance/what-renters-insurance/). We would like to see you make creative use of these APIs to come up with a new way to sell these insurance products or to solve consumer-facing challenges or problems insurance organizations experience today.
I hope that helps! Thanks again for participating in our hack and have a great day!
Carol