In today‘s fast-paced digital world, it’s no surprise that businesses are constantly looking for ways to modernize their operations. However, for large insurers, deciding on which products to modernize for digital distribution can be a challenge. This is due to factors such as tight budgets, and the need to maintain strong relationships with broker partners. Furthermore, some products are bundled as part of more complicated commercial insurance products, making it challenging to digitize them for online use.

Complicated documents are also necessary for some products, even though users only want to complete a simple flow. Previous customer service resources are wasted answering straightforward questions where the policy premium size does not justify the allocation of resources. Manual email between broker, insurer, and insured just results in inefficiency and a long sales process that can lead to client slippage.

At PolicyDock, we have developed a solution to address these challenges. We have digitized products that were previously considered legacy, including submission forms, rating tables, and policy documents. By integrating with third-party data sources such as Verisk, we have packaged everything into a simple online platform. This platform includes admin privileges and changes available for the underwriter, a white-label broker portal that allows large brokers to have their direct-to-consumer and automated binding of the policy, and a policyholder portal for insured to check policy details at any time.

Our API-first approach ensures that Insurtechs and digital ecosystems have full APIs to build on top of the platform, unleashing innovation for the insurer. One example of insurers using our solution is Travelers, who are leveraging the platform to do Rate/Quote/Issue (RQI) on the glass for a simple tractor protection product.  This application has the potential to reduce cost and increase customer satisfaction. The whole system was built in less than 3 months and it interfaces with a legacy backend process seamlessly.  This eliminates the integration headache, which can become a cost sink in many digitization projects.  Our SaaS solution ensures cost scale with usage, and our dynamic data model allows for versioning for new policy versions, making it easy to update digital forms instantly.

Legacy products don’t have to stay legacy. By digitizing products and integrating them into a simple online platform, we can help insurers achieve significant speed and cost savings while unleashing innovation for the future.

The post Legacy Products Don’t Have to Stay Legacy appeared first on Policydock.

PolicyDock is proud to announce a collaboration with Silicon Valley-based business productivity software company Sensible, making it possible for insurers to turn PDFs and document images into structured data.

Founded in 2020 by a team with a background in insurance and machine learning, Sensible has built a set of developer tools and a query language that makes it easy to parse data out of PDFs. PolicyDock’s partnership with Sensible means insurers will be able to auto-complete online forms within seconds by ‘dragging-and-dropping’ PDFs.

“PDFs are the main form of communication in a business such as insurance. By providing our customers with a versatile tool like Sensible which can handle any type of PDF, our customers will be able to auto-complete forms and drag-and-drop policy schedules. The structured data our customers get in return will serve as a key foundational element of good data analysis,” said Roger Ying, CEO, PolicyDock.

“By automating what was previously a manual process, insurers save time and money as they do not need to grow their operations team at the same pace as their subscriber numbers. For organizations building tools around insurance workflows, Sensible is the fastest way to integrate document parsing into your software,” said Sensible’s co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Ming Lu.

Since its creation last year, insuretech PolicyDock has helped insurance businesses across the value chain harmonize data from disparate sources, using insurance technology to give them agility and the ability to perform real-time data analysis. PolicyDock’s partnership with Sensible is yet another reflection of the company’s aim to make insurance easy.

For more information, please contact PolicyDock here.

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PolicyDock achieved SOC 2 Type 1 attestation after passing a rigorous technical audit by accounting firm Lurie, LLP. This report validates the safety and robustness of the protection mechanisms we have in place to safeguard client data. PolicyDock worked with Drata, a security and compliance automation platform, to navigate the audit process and provide real-time visibility across the organization.

“As a company handling data for firms in a highly regulated industry such as insurance, PolicyDock takes data security and privacy very seriously,” said PolicyDock CEO Roger Ying. “This is a milestone for us. We thank our business partners for trusting us every step of the way.”

As cyber-attacks rise and an increasing number of companies process information in the cloud, adhering to strict security and compliance protocols have become a pre-requisite of doing business.

Developed by the AICPA, SOC 2 is an extensive auditing procedure that ensures that a company is handling customer data securely and in a manner that protects the organization as well as the privacy of its customers. SOC 2 is designed for service providers storing customer data in the cloud.

As more enterprises look to process sensitive and confidential business data with cloud-based services like PolicyDock, it’s critical that they do so in a way that ensures their data will remain safe. Our customers carry this responsibility on their shoulders every single day, and it’s important that the vendors they select to process their data in the cloud approach that responsibility in the same way.

We welcome all customers and prospects who are interested in discussing our commitment to security and reviewing our SOC compliance reports to contact us.

For more information, please contact PolicyDock here.

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System Speeds Identification of Capacity for Digitally Native Products

Singapore, March 3, 2022: PolicyDock is proud to announce its collaboration with New York-based start-up Stere to provide insurance-as-a-service to Stere’s customers. Launched by Dogan Kaleli, ex-head of programs for Allianz North America, Stere is a risk capacity marketplace that provides a digital ecosystem where embedded insurance partners, MGAs, and brokers connect with capacity providers. PolicyDock’s insurance-as-a-service platform helps Stere clients instantly launch new insurance programs and products, while providing full APIs to allow for digital distribution such as embedded insurance.

“Our API-first microservices platform launches programs within a matter of hours, increasing efficiency by streamlining the process,” said PolicyDock CEO Roger Ying. “Through this partnership with Stere, clients can quickly find capacity for their new digitally native insurance products while leveraging our fully modular and customizable platform to focus on growing their business rather than deploying technology.”

Built by a team with deep expertise in insurance, fintech, and AI, PolicyDock has already been adopted by several venture-backed start-ups, well-established MGAs, brokers, and tier one insurance carriers to modernize their business processes across the insurance value chain.

“We are creating growth opportunities for businesses on both sides of the equation: the MGAs/MGUs and insurtechs as well as the technology firms who want to provide embedded insurance as part of their offering and open new revenue sources,” said Stere CEO Dogan Kaleli. “PolicyDock is an important addition to our digital ecosystem where clients have access to a platform that can be easily integrated by capacity providers, who monitor their data in real-time, while seamlessly launching new programs. We see an immense future for digitally native insurance products and creating this global platform brings us one step closer to fully democratizing insurance.”

About PolicyDock

PolicyDock provides a turnkey insurance platform-as-a-service platform for reinsurers, insurers, MGA’s and brokers that’s API first, white label, modular and fully customizable. PolicyDock’s microservices cloud-native platform are built within hours via a no-code product configurator platform that allows clients to digitize existing or new products, integrate third party data sources and the latest tech, and drastically speed up go-to-market. 

About Stere

Stere is a digital ecosystem for insurance programs. With Stere, program leaders source capacity and access digital tools to launch sooner and grow faster and smarter. Stere clients are “capacity seekers” such as MGAs, program administrators, and embedded insurance programs, along with their ecosystem partners such as carriers, fronting carriers, reinsurers, brokers, program consultants, and technology providers. 

The post PolicyDock and Stere Collaborate on Insurance-As-A-Service Platform appeared first on Policydock.

The following scenario might ring true for some folks in the insurance business: you want to test new industry innovation but cannot because the technology is either incompatible with the legacy system or requires expensive adjustments that may not pay off in the end. These problems can be overcome if you have an environment where you could try new things before making a commitment that requires months of internal organization.

What exactly is this ‘sandbox’ environment that PolicyDock is proposing?

• ‘Sandbox insurance’ is a cloud-based environment for insurers to test new technology
  Within this environment, people can see new technology working and how it connects with the rest of the workflow. In this environment, the integration between the new technology and your existing system happens within a few hours, not months. All you need to do to test and integrate the latest technology is send them the APIs. 

• It is truly low risk
  Innovation teams no longer need to spend months aligning with business units before testing new products. Simply deploy the environment to see how the new technology works alone or alongside its competitors.  The potential return-on-investment outweighs the risks of trying because new products can be trialled without dismantling anything in existing legacy systems.

• ‘Sandbox insurance’ exposes innovation teams to the latest tools of the trade
  As new insurance technology can be compared side by side, innovation teams can assess their suitability immediately rather than relying on an abstract understanding. Innovation teams will be able to keep abreast of the latest industry developments through this safe environment.

• A ‘sandbox insurance’ environment helps a business make more data driven decision
  Modern technology architecture is cloud-based and API-driven because these two technologies provide the speed and security needed for businesses to scale rapidly. By establishing an architecture that allows you to test various types of industry innovation, you make data driven decisions that help pave the way for the organization to transition to a digital world where speed and agility are essential.
  

  For more information, please contact us here.

Related content:

• How strong is a business’s cyber protection? Find out within seconds (1 min video demo).
• PolicyDock and Sensible help insurers turn PDFs intro structured data (1 min video demo).

The post 4 things to know about how PolicyDock helps insurers test new products rapidly at low cost appeared first on Policydock.

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay 

While small compared to the rest of the industry, cyber insurance is growing rapidly. Between 2016 and 2020, the take up rate of cyber policies grew from 26% to 47%. The GWP of standalone cyber coverage in particular grew by 29% between 2019 and 2020 because organisations wanted more specific protection.

PolicyDock has had the chance to collaborate with businesses across the insurance value chain to help them take advantage of the rising interest in cyber security protection. Here’s how our technology has been applied in different scenarios:

What we can do for insurers

15- or 20-year-old legacy core systems carry many duplicated offerings, the result of a lack of standardisation across geographies. Consequently, responding to a customer’s claims took a long time because insurers needed to source the exact policy version to read the details.

When working with a renowned carrier, PolicyDock utilized its AI and machine-learning trained APIs to simplify thousands of legacy product data models while eliminating redundancy. Data standardisation enabled digital products to be released in the market very quickly through the carrier’s new systems – 45x faster than expected. At the same time, the carrier was able to monitor global rollout results in real time. Additionally, PolicyDock’s data platform served as an ongoing interface between the carrier’s new digital system and core legacy PAS. 

The final cost of the project? 80% under budget.

What we can do for MGAs

MGAs specialising in cyber insurance like Coalition Inc and At Bay have enjoyed great success raising capital over the past 12 months. The fact that investors are willing to devote over $100 million to each of these companies demonstrates the faith they have in the business potential of cyber security insurance.

PolicyDock has had the opportunity to work with a California-based MGA dedicated to protecting small and medium sized businesses from cyber-attacks. During the COVID-19 pandemic, PolicyDock’s APIs digitized and securely integrated the MGA’s products with the carrier’s outdated technology platform. The process was completed within two weeks instead of six months. On top of that, the MGA ended up spending 90% less than they originally estimated.

Now not only do their customers have a faster portal to work with, their staff spend less time on manual tasks and more time analysing real time data.

What we can do for digital ecosystems

Embedded insurance is emerging as a new way of distributing insurance efficiently because the technology underpinning it processes data in real time at a relatively low cost. The automated processes allow insurance products to be offered to people or businesses at the touch of a button when they need it the most as part of the product or service. 

Businesses like Google have added this to their revenue stream by partnering with Allianz and Munich Re to provide a cyber insurance product to its Google Cloud customers. Launched in March this year, the policies will be offered to US companies with an annual revenue between $500 million and $5 billion, and cover up to $50 million in losses.

Similarly, PolicyDock has previously worked with a leading mobility provider to realise their aim of offering insurance as part of their checkout process. Prior to our involvement, internal engineering estimates concluded it would take over six months to implement the project. Projected fees and system upgrades made the project unprofitable. 

By integrating their product using PolicyDock’s API, the white-label cloud platform was deployed and integrated with the provider 4x faster than expected, at 80% of the original internal assessments. Both the provider and insurer are able to monitor business results in real time using native dashboards.

For more information, please contact PolicyDock here.

Related content:

• How strong is a business’s cyber protection? Find out within seconds (1 min video demo).
• PolicyDock and Sensible help insurers turn PDFs intro structured data (1 min video demo).

The post Where are you in the cyber insurance chain? appeared first on Policydock.

New technology has been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it has heralded an age of rapid innovation; on the other hand, technology has created a new set of cyber security risks that businesses and governments everywhere must manage.

The challenge with cyber-attacks is that the rapid pace of change in the digital landscape. The increasing sophistication of cyber criminals makes standalone cyber insurance even more important because it is specifically written for this type of risk: coverage risks are wider, coverage limits are higher. Judging by the 29% increase in GWP between 2019 and 2020, it is clear that a growing number of businesses agree a cyber-specific policy is more suitable for today’s environment. 

To understand the threats of a rapidly evolving industry, carriers and reinsurers need to work together with cyber security firms to create policies that meet current market demands and boost customer confidence in the carrier.

PolicyDock rapidly synthesises disparate sources of information

To that end, PolicyDock helps cyber insurers manage the need to regularly update and integrate with different types of data sources. Our technology, trained with machine learning and artificial intelligence, can create one system of record from disparate sources of data i.e. channel and underwriting partners. The synchronised information can be updated easily via APIs.

From then on, every business in the insurance value chain will be flexible in who they integrate their APIs with, much quicker in launching new products or updating current ones, processing applications, visualizing data and trends.

Case study

Consider our experience working with a major reinsurer who wanted to offer a cyber insurance product digitally to its insurance partners. Each insurer used a different PAS which had its own data standards, making it impossible to monitor data in real-time. PolicyDock digitized the product into a white-label insurance-in-a-box solution for the reinsurer to provide to its insurance partners. These partners were able to provide a seamless quote and bind experience and customer portal to its policyholders resulting in an 80% rise in efficiency. Just as importantly, the reinsurer was able to monitor the portfolio in real time while automatically collecting clean, structured data, and generating reports on all policies. If the reinsurer had wanted to embed our APIs with a cyber security partner that would have been achievable as well.

Get your product to-market sooner; safeguard your data

The agility that microservices like PolicyDock delivers means product development times are greatly reduced. The setup and implementation process is also painless since the product comes pre-configured with the necessary insurance details and data connections. Moreover, the microservice is localised for your jurisdiction and your reinsurer or insurer’s business partners do not need to upgrade their IT or legacy systems. Should cyber security verification become a prerequisite for all businesses, a system that is set-up in advance will offer the speed and dexterity necessary.

If any insurer or reinsurer wants to get in early on the rising cyber security tide, that move would be an astute business decision and one that would be easy to implement. After all, cyber security is a business issue that requires companies to sidestep risk and respond nimbly. While the sector is young compared to a mature cousin like property and casualty insurance, pricing for cyber risk is now a distinct line of business.

For more information, please contact PolicyDock here.

Related content:

• How strong is a business’s cyber protection? Find out within seconds (1 min video demo).
• PolicyDock and Sensible help insurers turn PDFs intro structured data (1 min video demo).

The post Why cyber insurance-as-a-service is well suited for reinsurers or insurers appeared first on Policydock.

Cyber insurance loss ratios have gained a lot of attention recently because of the substantial increase. Was insurer pricing inaccurate to begin with?

This is also a legacy problem that larger carriers have. You know, with those newer kind of insurtechs, they’ve built in a lot of technology to handle risk quantification, portfolio management, as well as pre-read cyber readiness and monitoring for the clients. But from the traditional insurance standpoint, they are still stuck on legacy systems that have created siloed data across the value chain, which they can’t access in real time to help them make critical underwriting decisions.

And a lot of, for example, applications for cyber insurance is still done via these long-winded PDFs. Very often, clients do not actually even know how to answer questions like “how many, how much biometric information do you store?” So many questions have been answered falsely. From the insurers point of view when a claim comes in, to protect their brand, they should pay the claims just to satisfy the client.

To price the product accurately, insurers need good quality data which comes from a variety of sources. Do you think other businesses like cybersecurity firms are ready to share such information with insurers?

This is the discrepancy in the value chain is:

Cybersecurity firms want to cross sell insurance to their clients because they have the most information on the clients. They’ve done a lot of preparation like penetration testing, testing if the company is SOC-2 compliant, if the company practices multi-factor authentication. So logically, this is where cybersecurity firms and insurers should be working together, but because of legacy systems, it’s been hard.

At the same time, clients are thinking: I’ve spent so much money on cybersecurity firms making sure I’m protected. If I’ve covered all these loopholes, my percentage chance of being hacked is very low so why am I still paying the same price of a company that does not have all these loopholes covered?

There could be more synergy between cybersecurity firms and insurance companies which still has not happened.

Are small and medium enterprises less likely to buy cyber security insurance because they find it too expensive?

That’s exactly the point. When I tried to get cyber insurance recently, I was quoted something like an exorbitant amount whereby we have and are undergoing many security audits and have put more than average preventative measures in place. At the end of the day, what I’m paying for is a lack of expertise, per se, amongst the insurer to quantify my cyber risk. It’s almost like, you try to get a loan from a bank, and they don’t know who you are.

What’s your opinion on the education level of cyber risks among SMEs, insurers, brokers – basically everyone along the value chain?

I think it’s generally low. As people are using more SaaS services and things like that, the cyber risk conversation should be kind of part of the daily conversation.

Why do you still believe in the business opportunity within cyber risk insurance even though it seems to be in a state of flux?

When there’s a big problem, there’s a big opportunity. Are cyber risks going away? No. Yes, loss ratios are high but that’s because of a mismatch in the market.

It’s almost like applying for credit or a loan back in the days, where a community bank may make a loan based on trust, but in this day and age where every company has a cyber and trackable digital footprint, you can leverage big data which helps you understand who your clients are. There are ways to better optimise and underwrite that risk and manage your portfolio.

For more info, please contact us here.

Related content:

• Why cyber insurance will become compulsory (2 min read)
• PolicyDock – now integrated with cyber security ratings firm Bitsight (1 min video demo)
• 5 pain points an insurance technology company like PolicyDock solves (2 min read)

The post Customised cyber insurance pricing: a white space in the market appeared first on Policydock.

With cyber-attacks on the rise, is your business ready? Roger Ying, CEO, PolicyDock explains why you should be.

What’s changed in cyber risk insurance?

Cyber insurance used to be part of a package commercial insurance deal, it was more of an add on previously, mainly because I think insurance didn’t believe that policyholders would claim. Now that cyber risks are going up, it has become an important issue not only for large multinationals, but also for smaller to medium sized businesses. For example, I have a friend who had paid to pay a ransom by bitcoin so that they could get gain access back into the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. This proves that no business is too small to be compromised by hackers.

This market was estimated to grow 24% CAGR compound annual growth rate but the report was done before COVID-19. Now that all businesses are moving more towards a work-from-home type of model, there has been an increased cyber risk – hacking – so this has become more top of mind for most businesses. We believe the market is poised to grow to $25 billion by 2025. We think that this estimate has not accounted for the price increase adjustments of between 10-30% across the board by insurers now. We think this market will grow a lot bigger and faster because of COVID.

What does cyber insurance cover businesses for?

It could be a kind of cyber liability like reputational damage, it could also be seen as data breaches and data recovery costs, cyber extortion losses or when a hacker does a denial of service attack that results in business interruption. 

So it’s actually really important for people to know what their company’s main exposures to cyber risk are. Someone like Facebook versus an e-commerce store versus a construction company will have very different cyber footprints. Clearly, you are exposed to different risks.

Do you think businesses are doing enough to secure themselves against cyber risks that affect their third-party vendors?

Businesses in the US are starting to ask their business partners to prove that they are adequately protected and insured against cyber risks because they could be indirectly compromised if a breach happens, even getting access as simple as through accounting software. On top of that, regulators are starting to pay attention so these are just some of the cyber insurance market trends.

But generally speaking, businesses are probably not as secure as they can be.

For more information, please contact PolicyDock here.

Related content:

• How strong is a business’s cyber protection? Find out within seconds (1 min video demo).
• PolicyDock and Sensible help insurers turn PDFs intro structured data (1 min video demo).

The post Why cyber insurance will become compulsory for businesses (Part 1) appeared first on Policydock.

When McKinsey did their study of cloud adoption in 2016, insurance was one of the last adopters of either the private or public cloud. Other highly regulated sectors such as healthcare and other types of financial services were ahead of the curve.

Major industry trends

But the tides are beginning to shift as insurers are aware of industry disruption coming from many sides: economic growth is slowing in many countries, and competition is being disrupted by technology giants and insurtechs. At the same time, customer expectations have changed: people want a higher degree of personalization, freedom of choice, and faster service. Additionally, research done by IBM suggests the money spent on legacy systems to keep systems working does not appear to have a meaningful impact on enterprise success.

Move faster in ways once thought impossible

Platform business models which are hosted in the cloud are a way out for several reasons. 

Firstly, insurers are insulated from system maintenance disruptions because the cloud provider takes care of the infrastructure maintenance. Secondly, instead of maintaining CPUs and storage in the data centre, businesses save on IT costs by ‘renting’ these from the cloud provider. Thirdly, platforms help businesses grow by generating revenue from diverse sources like embedded insurance. Software releases that were once scheduled in terms of months or years can now be released in days or weeks. Moreover, to power services, deliver innovative user experiences, and receive real-time analytics, businesses need the cloud to move faster. 

PolicyDock’s API-first insurance technology can do all the above for you after the multiple product repetitions inherent within legacy systems are reduced to just a few product clusters. What’s more, our APIs can be customized for an insurer’s slick user interface.

Commissioning an insurtech like PolicyDock to build a platform business model for you is a far more economical and efficient approach compared to doing it yourself. With PolicyDock, a product can be launched in under two weeks with just 2-4 full-time employees. Constructing a platform on your own would take around 24 months and require 5 times more manpower. And then, there are the costs associated with maintenance and upgrades if you construct your own platform. Each of these require a minimum of $1 million alone. You would also be constantly redesigning your platform to achieve optimum technical agility – PolicyDock’s API microservices architecture removes that hassle.

Watch this 1 minute demo to see how everything comes together.

For more information, please contact PolicyDock here.

Related content:

• How strong is a business’s cyber protection? Find out within seconds (1 min video demo).
• PolicyDock and Sensible help insurers turn PDFs intro structured data (1 min video demo).

The post Buy vs build appeared first on Policydock.