APIs for Better Insurance Experiences
Insurance companies are naturally data driven. In If, the largest P&C insurer in the Nordics, we are not only using data for creating insurance products, but for offering superior customer experiences. APIs enable us to be by our customer’s side.
APIs, Application Programming Interfaces, are the pipelines that supply modern digital solutions with data. The big tech companies early understood the importance of APIs, and you might have read Jeff Bezos’ famous mandate on the subject (1). For If, APIs are fundamental to our digital transformation and growing our partner ecosystem.
Gartner says it well: “It is impossible to provide the platform for any digital strategy, build ecosystems and run an effective API program, without full life cycle API management.” (2)
If has used APIs for more than a decade and have hundreds of partners integrated, but recently we have started industrializing our API offering. Partnerships are key to good insurance experiences, so that we can be by our customer’s side whether they are buying their first car or in need of roadside assistance. We have therefore shifted towards an “API as Products” mindset to offer more professional data products to our partners. Our internal teams are also making API products to re-use data and functionality and shorten time to market for our own services.
How we develop API Products
We have mature DevOps Teams developing and operating API products for digital customer journeys within all our main insurance areas: mobility, property, personal and travel. These APIs are mainly for getting insurance information, ensuring distribution or supporting claims processes.
Our DevOps teams, typically also working with our digital channels, are responsible for developing the APIs and we practice a “shortest way to source” principle in terms of what system the data should be fetched from. Data is however not always available via APIs in the backend, and the teams sometimes use Azure Data Factory to gather and structure the data before making microservices and API Products.
As in classic product development, we start with business modelling to define what value we are creating for whom. Personas, jobs to be done and customer journeys must be clearly defined. We have an agile way of working, both with partners and with internal teams, to ensure that we are developing the right APIs as fast as possible. The key to good API Products is tight collaboration between business and IT and professional product management.
API Platform for lifecycle management
Microsoft Azure API Management Platform is used as our API Gateway. It is a “slim” platform that enables us to use the same processes and infrastructure for API Products as we do for our regular insurance products. We aim to use the tools that are best fit to support the different elements of the API product lifecycle and do not rely on one vendor’s platform to solve it all.
Our API platform team offers a range of services for our API products and their producers and consumers. They have automatic build steps for the DevOps teams and readymade solutions for logging, monitoring and health checks. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools are also provided. The Developer Portal is built on same content management systems as our regular insurance products sites to ensure the same visual identity and brand experience. A centralized IAM platform, to know exactly who has got access to the data, both on company, application and user level, is key. See our main capabilities for API Products in the figure below.
How to get access to the API Products?
We have a Developer Portal for external and internal API consumers. Currently this is an MVP, and to be honest it needs some improvements, but a new version is already on its way.
There are three simple steps to onboard:
1) Discover. Check out our APIs and try them in our sandbox
2) Order. Sign in, order and get access to our APIs. We have documentation and code samples to guide you.
3) Develop. First you get access to our test APIs. When your application is ready to go, you will get access to our production APIs.
We are constantly developing our API Products, and other related data products like “Event Products” (webhooks), to continue ensuring excellent customer experiences in our own and our partners’ channels.
Want to know more about how we work with data in If? Check out this article “The Rise of Data Products and Their Owners” on how If’s data product owners are helping data consumers to create value.
Question or comments? — Send us an e-mail.
Sources:
(1) The API Mandate — Install API Thinking at your Company — API-University (api-university.com)
(2) API Management Tools Reviews 2021 | Gartner Peer Insights
