Sharing data gives rise to tailor-made offers and customer experiences and therefore to competitive advantages. With the entry into force of the EU’s PSD2 Payment Services Directive, open interfaces have already become established in the banking sector and have given the industry a real boost in terms of technology. The insurance industry, in comparison to the banking world, still has a lot of catching up to do in this regard.

However, in order for them to be able to participate actively and efficiently in digital ecosystems, open and standardised interfaces are also a basic requirement for insurance companies. The goal of such ecosystems is to integrate personalised offers as seamlessly as possible into policyholders’ respective sectors of life and broker’s everyday work by exchanging data with third parties and utilising data analyses – in the sense of data-driven insurance – and also to create added value together.

There are currently no specific regulations in the insurance sector regarding the transfer of data to third parties. The European Commission, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) and the German Federal Government are however increasing their efforts to open up data interfaces across sectors. In doing so, the German Federal Government is focusing on concrete use cases, such as the digital pension overview and a standardised reporting system.

In the area of brokers and insurance sales, the standardisation efforts of the BiPRO (Industry Institute for Process Optimisation [Brancheninstitut für Prozessoptimierung, BiPRO]) are already tackling the exchange of information. Then again, at the point of customer contact, there is still no firmly established standard in the market. A large number of initiatives are currently dealing with the exchange of insurance data between players outside and within the world of insurance.

adesso supports the development of standardised interfaces

As a solution and technology partner, adesso is committed in a variety of ways to advancing the standardisation of interfaces in the insurance industry.

The open insurance approach is still being developed at the moment. It includes standardised data interfaces to other market participants and is a broad topic of discussion as regards transformation. Insurers should however already seize open insurance as an opportunity to use new business models and ecosystems to generate added value for their customers. The approach is open, customer-centric and standardised.

For insurers, open insurance can become a catalyst for retaining your customers and for new business in the years to come. In addition to the necessary regulatory framework conditions and technological requirements, this also necessitates an ‘open insurance mindset’ and the will for strategic implementation.

The first concrete use cases of Open Insurance are already emerging:

• Pension cockpits give policyholders a holistic overview of their future pension benefits.
• Real-time data enables insurers to efficiently process customer data that can be used for new sales activities that target customers individually.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) makes it possible to systematically detect cases of fraud. In addition, APIs are used to compare information and data submitted by customers with existing insurance policies.

Additional exciting and innovative use cases are outlined in the InsurLab Germany white paper on open insurance. It describes both the advantages and the requirements for implementing them.

Get in touch with us if you want to implement or further develop standardised interfaces in your insurance company. Whether you need to exchange information with public authorities or within your sales ecosystem, we will be happy to advise you. We will also assist you in developing an ‘open insurance mindset’ within your company, identifying suitable use cases and designing a roadmap for implementation.

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