Bureau Integrations

What Are They

Most insurers don't create an insurance product from scratch. To be profitable and compliant, you have to follow sound actuarial principles. And sound actuarial principles require a lot of data!

Instead, insurers either copy someone else's existing product (as filed with each state's department of insurance) or work from products created by rating bureaus—like Verisk's Insurance Services Office (ISO), or the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) for Workers' Compensation. Rating bureaus are a solid bet because of the sheer amount of data they have to work with. They ingest that data every day in the form of mandated statistical reporting from existing insurers.

If you decide to use an existing bureau product, you have 3 questions to answer:

  1. Do I want to be able to copy the product over automatically? Or am I OK copying everything manually?
  2. Do I use the product as is, or will I make my own changes?
  3. Bureaus make changes to their rates and forms all the time. Do I want to be able to follow those changes automatically? Or would I rather work things out on my own?

Buying

Many policy software vendors don't offer rating bureau integrations. If you want to copy a bureau product, you can still do that; you'll just have to do it yourself.

But a growing number offer built-in integrations to make this easier for you, including DAIS, Solartis, eBaoTech's InsureMO… and some we hope to write about soon!

Copying the Product

Some policy software vendors can copy a bureau product for you over easily, including rates and forms. And then you can make your own changes from there, of course. But these vendors find customers tend to prefer to manage their own product after that. So they don't offer any way to apply bureau updates automatically as they come out.

Keeping Up with Updates: Two "Layers"

Other policy software vendors also allow you to update your product automatically. They tend to structure the insurance product in two "layers." On one layer is the bureau product itself; on the other is your changes. Then, when the bureau updates their product, those updates can be incorporated automatically in that first layer—without affecting any of your changes. If there's a conflict between the two, you can resolve it manually.

DAIS, Solartis, and eBaoTech's InsureMO fall into this category.1

Building

If you're building your own policy software, you might think you're on your own. Certainly, most insurtechs with in-house policy software start by getting the product out, and only build bureau integrations later if at all. It tends to be the last priority.

But this is by far not your only option. In today's insurtech world, "buy vs build" is not binary. It's no longer "Do you buy or build," but "What do you buy, and what do you build?" Teams are increasingly using products like Insly, INSTANDA, InsureMO, and Joshu alongside existing systems of record to consolidate their product logic and get to market faster. Of those, at least InsureMO offers bureau integrations.

You can also integrate with ISO's latest Electronic Rating Content (ERC 2.0) on your own. If you're not making changes to the ISO product, they offer rating as a service. Or you can write your rating engine to consume their XML and CSV files, and implement the product yourself.

Footnotes

  1. For more on how Solartis accomplishes this integration differently, see their product page! ↩