The Boost Policy Admin System: How We’re Different

APIs have become ubiquitous in modern technology - and in modern tech marketing. If you’ve ever looked into buying a software service or platform in the last ten years, the odds are that a good API was listed as one of the selling points. But what exactly makes an API “good?” Before we dive into that question, let’s take a minute to recap what APIs are, and why they’ve become so central to business and technology. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are the mechanisms that allow computer software to communicate with each other. APIs ensure that when one software system makes a request, another system can understand the request and respond correctly. When discussing the relationship between two software systems, the application sending the request for action is called the client, and the application sending the response is called the server.  For example, your bank’s software system houses all of your banking data–that software system is the server. The banking app on your phone is the client. When you initiate actions in your banking app, like making transactions, checking your account balance, or even chatting with a representative, the app communicates with the bank’s software via its API and tells it which action to perform. The server provides an API for the client to use to perform actions. Let’s say that you want to make a transfer of funds from your checking account to your savings account. You open your banking app and navigate to the transfer tab where you are asked which account you are transferring from, which account you are transferring to, the amount you want to transfer, and any additional notes before you can submit the request. Within seconds of submitting your request, the number on your checking account decreases and the number on your savings account increases, and the physical amount of money you can withdraw from the bank for both accounts has changed.  For this to happen and money to actually be moved, the app needs a way to tell the bank’s system what to do. That is where the API comes in. The APIs are the rules and protocols that are coded into both systems as a set of predetermined requests and responses.  When you enter how much money you want to move and where you want to move it to, the client communicates with the API on the server. When the server receives that request, it reads the information and executes a predetermined set of actions to move exactly the amount of money that you requested into the correct account.   From a technical standpoint, APIs consist of two main components: an address and a body. The address, also known as an endpoint, tells the data where it's supposed to go (in our example, the bank’s system). The body is the data that will be delivered to that address.  APIs allow developers to automate functions and create a very clear, easy-to-understand relationship between what the user needs to do and what the computer systems will do in response to their requests.  Without APIs, the modern conveniences of apps, digital transactions, and the like couldn't exist. Everything would require human, manual interference. Instead of quickly logging into an app on your phone to make a transfer of funds, you would have to physically go into your bank or talk to a teller over the phone, and your request would take much longer to process.  But because of the code and predetermined actions built into digital systems through APIs, users can interact with services much faster. You can transfer your money in seconds, and the bank can gather your information, automate manual processes, and make their work more efficient. Now that we’ve established what an API is and why they are important, let’s talk about what makes a good API. While all APIs follow the same principle of allowing systems to communicate, not all APIs function equally well. The quality at which an API is developed impacts how effective any system will be at actually doing what the user is asking for.   So what makes a good, well-constructed API? Here are 5 aspects of a good API. First and foremost, APIs should be simple. This means having clear addresses, endpoints, and easy-to-understand request body structures. In our banking example, the bank’s software and the app’s software are presumably owned and operated by the same company–the bank. Oftentimes, however, the client and the server belong to different companies. Developers at both companies will need to build their systems to be able to understand the API and react accordingly. A simple, straightforward API structure makes it easier to correctly implement.   Let's take a look at an insurance API example. Say that you own a pet store and you have partnered with an insurance carrier to offer embedded pet insurance to your customers. In order for your customers to purchase insurance from you, they have to enter their information in a form on your website. Then the insurance company receives that information, makes an underwriting decision, and issues the policy.  In order for the insurance company to receive your customers’ information and take action on it, your front-end systems need to communicate with your insurance partner’s system. The set of requests and responses between these separate systems should be simple and clear. The simpler the API, the faster and more seamless the integration between these two systems will be, and the fewer opportunities for mistakes.  A good API should be able to execute all (or at least most) of the functions a user would need. Going back to our bank example, an app that allowed the user to check their balance but not to transfer funds wouldn’t be very useful to the customer. To be effective, the bank’s API needs to be able to handle most of the things a customer might want to use their bank app for.  For more complex functions, it’s important that an API be able to collect and process all of the information needed to return a response. For our pet insurance example, let’s say that in order to decide to issue a policy, the insurance company needs ten pieces of information from the customer.  If the API could only handle five of those pieces of information, the rest would need to be submitted separately (likely over email or a phone call with an insurance agent). It would be an inconvenient experience for both the customer and the insurance company, and increase the likelihood of manual errors. A good insurance API would be able to collect and process all information needed to issue a policy, right from the app or website. Errors are inevitable with any piece of software. What sets a good API apart from a bad one is how it handles errors when they arise. Good error handling can make the difference between getting back on track quickly, or getting bogged down in bug reports. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of software errors: 400 errors and 500 errors. The difference between the two is how much information they can give about what’s gone wrong. 400-type errors are specific errors with an identified problem. One of the most familiar is a “404 not found” error, which occurs on the web when a user tries to navigate to a web page that doesn’t exist. If you’ve ever mistyped a URL or clicked on an old link to an inactive page, you’ve seen a 404 error. Because 400-type errors give a specific reason for why the request failed, they also give direction on how to go about fixing the problem. 500-type errors, on the other hand, are much less clear. 500 errors indicate general server failures, crashes, or bugs. These tend to be more frustrating for users and developers alike, since they don’t contain much to go on for how to fix it. A good API should be able to produce mostly 400-type errors that identify the problem so that it can be easily tracked and fixed. When an API produces a lot of unidentifiable 500 errors, it indicates a poor-quality API. While not technically part of the API itself, good documentation is essential to a successful API. As developers integrate systems or build the API rules into an app, documentation has a direct impact on how quickly they can work, and how well they can avoid errors.  Good documentation should specifically describe each of the endpoints, what the requests should contain, and what the responses will contain. In many applications, an API will touch various parts of an overall system. This is especially true for more complex operations like our pet insurance example. On the user’s side, applying for insurance might seem like a straightforward software operation - they fill out the form, and the software sends it. On the insurance company’s side, however, it’s much more complex.  When the user submits their application, numerous parts of the insurance company’s system will be involved with the process. One part of the system will document the personal information they provided in the application. Another part will use that information to make calculations around premium costs, and still another part will generate the policy itself. In order to make sure this all happens seamlessly, developers need access to comprehensive, up-to-date documentation for how all these components interact and are executed via the API.  Finally, a key benefit of APIs in general is speed. Rather than trudging through manual processes, APIs are meant to automate functions that would take much longer if human interactions were required. A good API should allow information to be passed between servers quickly and efficiently. Going back to our earlier examples, no one wants to sit and wait to see if their bank transfer request or their insurance application was successfully received. For the best user experience, APIs should process requests in less than a second. If an API is slow to respond, it may indicate inefficient architecture, or that the servers are housed on insufficiently powerful hardware. APIs allow businesses to function in a modern, technologically savvy way. By continuously improving the communication between client and server systems, consumers have access to a wider variety of digital transactions and services than ever before. If you want to learn more about Boost’s API and how we can help your business stand out through insurance-as-a-service, contact us, or dive into building your insurance program with Boost Launchpad.

If you’ve never heard of parental leave insurance, you’re not alone. Parental leave insurance is a relatively new product on the market but an increasingly necessary one. Let’s explore a few of the reasons why parental leave is important and what solutions insurance can offer.  Becoming a new parent is a major life event that can be happy and exciting, but it can also present challenges in the workplace for both employees and employers. Over 60 million Americans are parents, but the U.S. is one of the few countries worldwide with no universal parental leave requirements. As such, nearly 30% of working women quit their jobs after giving birth. In states that do require paid parental leave, however, the rate of mothers leaving the workforce dropped 20-50%. It’s no surprise that according to recent studies, “When deciding to accept a job offer, 66% of employees said the employer’s paid parental leave policy is important.”  Parental leave is a significant DEI issue for retaining female employees who become mothers. Social and cultural shifts over the past few decades have made this issue more important than ever. “With the increase in female employment rates, coupled with the decline of the male breadwinner family model…entitlements to job-protected leave after childbirth has become important policy measures to support parents” (EIGE).  Employees ranked parental leave as the third most desired benefit, outranked only by flexible work and paid insurance premiums, but many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) don’t offer it. In fact, only 23% of private employers in the U.S. offer paid parental leave in their benefits package, which puts SMEs at high risk of losing their employees when parenthood arises. Though paid parental leave is a highly requested benefit, it can be expensive for businesses to cover. For SMEs, this often prohibits them from offering any benefit at all. Adding to the difficulty, paid parental leave is also an unknown liability on the balance sheet. Employers can't predict if or when their employees will use it, which translates to a potentially large expense that they can’t accurately plan and budget for.  The Facebooks and Googles of the world can afford to be generous and pay that out of pocket, but many smaller companies can't. This puts those smaller companies at a disadvantage for both acquiring and retaining talent. In the absence of a national parental leave solution, it’s up to the private sector to find ways to support new parents in the workforce. Parental leave insurance is a business insurance innovation designed to make parental leave affordable for small and medium enterprises. This is how it works: an insurance provider offers the parental leave insurance product, sometimes as part of a larger business insurance suite. The SME chooses a package that covers the kind of leave they want to offer their employees. This includes factors like what percentage of the employee’s salary will be covered and the length of leave the SME will offer.  The SME then buys the policy, and pays the insurance provider a recurring premium based on their selected benefits and employee demographics. When a covered employee takes parental leave, the small or medium enterprise will file a claim through their insurance provider’s claims process. The SME will then be reimbursed for the cost of paying the employee during the covered leave period, as spelled out in the parental leave insurance policy.  It’s a solution for providing this benefit that mitigates large, unexpected leave costs. Instead, the employer pays a regular, planned amount in premiums, and can rest easy knowing their insurance policy will protect them. No more unknown liabilities on their balance sheet. Meanwhile, the SME can reap the benefits of attracting and retaining top talent by offering parental leave. With over 30 million small and medium enterprises in the U.S., there is a significant opportunity for insurtechs and embedded insurance providers to help businesses affordably provide this valuable benefit to their employees. Offering a first-of-its-kind, highly desirable insurance product is a forward-thinking way to set yourself and your clients apart in the market.  By offering parental leave insurance, you can help your clients attract and retain top talent. Employees are far more likely to work for a company where they feel supported, and this product is an effective way to establish your brand as focused on employees’ well-being while helping your clients to do the same. More than ever, employees want competitive, comprehensive, and inclusive insurance packages, and offering parental leave is an opportunity to positively impact employee experience and perception of their employer.  Additionally, adding parental leave insurance to your product lineup creates new cross-sell opportunities to boost revenue and LTV with your existing customers, and deepens their business relationship with you.  Parental leave insurance provides an opportunity to stand out from the competition. This is a first-of-its-kind product that is not being offered by many insurtechs, but benefits employers and employees alike. You have the opportunity to get ahead of the curve with this innovative white label insurance product.  If you want to learn more about growing your customer LTV with Boost’s Parental Leave Insurance, contact us.

If you’re new to the world of insurance, the process of getting an insurance license may seem time-consuming and even a little intimidating, but it’s surprisingly easy if you work with the right partner. In this blog, we’ll go over what an insurance license is, why it matters, how to attain the right licenses for your business, and how to get the help you need along the way.  Embedded insurance is a great opportunity to increase your revenue, diversify your offerings, and deepen customer relationships. To reap the full benefits, however, it’s recommended that your company get licensed.  An insurance license is a certification given by individual states that allows an individual or entity to sell, solicit, or negotiate insurance in that particular state. Each state requires a unique license. So, if you wanted to sell insurance in more than one state, you would need to obtain a license for every state you intended to sell in. If you or your company were to attempt to sell or market insurance without a license, it would be considered illegally selling insurance. You could be subject to large fines and legal repercussions from your state’s insurance regulatory agency (and the agency of any other state you illegally sold insurance in). This makes obtaining a license the crucial first step in the insurance selling process. The good news is, when you work with the right digital insurance partner to get the licenses you need, all of those issues can be easily avoided.  There are many different types of insurance licenses available, for different kinds of insurance (for example, selling cyber insurance requires a different kind of license than selling pet health insurance). For this blog, we’ll be discussing two licenses you need to become a distribution partner who sells and markets property & casualty insurance on behalf of a carrier: the Individual License and Entity License. An Individual License– also referred to as a “Producer” or “Agent” License– is given to an individual after they complete a pre-licensing course and pass the required tests in their resident state, which is a state where an individual has a residence or primary place of business. The purpose of this license is to educate the holder on the ins and outs of the insurance process and ensure that before selling, soliciting, or negotiating insurance, they are informed and responsible. Once someone in your company has attained their Individual License, your company can apply for its Entity License, also known as an “Agency” License. This license is given to the company itself and allows it to sell insurance within the resident state.  For your company to sell and market insurance products on behalf of carriers, you need both an Individual License holder and an Entity License.  When determining who should become licensed on the entity's behalf, the individual should be someone who holds a position of substance and is likely to stay at the company long-term. That usually means someone at the executive level, such as an owner, partner, director, or officer. Once this person has obtained their license, they will be known as the Designated Responsible Licensed Producer (DRLP), sometimes referred to as a “principal agent.” The DRLP needs to be licensed in all jurisdictions that the entity sells in. The DRLP is usually responsible for compliance oversight of the agents operating under them. Because the DRLP is typically held accountable for all entity actions, this kind of oversight is a requirement in most states. When selecting a candidate to become the entity’s DRLP, they should be informed and willing to take responsibility.  Some companies have more than one licensed person working for them, but only one is required to sell. If you lose your DRLP and there isn’t another licensed person at the company, then someone else will need to step in or be elevated to a suitable position to hold the title of DRLP. Otherwise, the entity can’t continue selling insurance. The Individual License should be obtained in your resident state. We’ve outlined the general steps to follow below, but every state has unique requirements. Make sure that you know the steps that apply to your state.  Once your DRLP has obtained their Individual License, your company can begin the process of attaining its Entity License. You and your company might want to sell or market insurance in more than just your resident state. Once the individual and entity are licensed in their resident states, each can begin applying for non-resident licenses in other states.  However, technically a “country-wide license” doesn’t exist. There isn’t one license that covers the whole country. Every state has a unique license and different requirements for its applications, so the process of getting licenses in multiple states can be extensive and complicated. Because the DRLP needs to be licensed in all jurisdictions that the entity sells in, the process involves filling out an application, gathering various supporting documentation, and submitting it individually to each state for both the individual and the entity. To sell nationwide, you would need to do this process multiple times to be licensed in all 51 U.S. jurisdictions—the 50 states and Washington D.C. Luckily, there is some reciprocity amongst the states, which means that if you get licensed in one state, you do not need to satisfy all the requirements like taking a pre-licensing course or licensing exam in all other states to become licensed there.   While reciprocity helps reduce the amount of work that is required to apply for individual and entity licenses in all 51 U.S. jurisdictions, that is still a lot of applications. If you choose to do these processes yourself, it can take a very long time, especially if you are unfamiliar with each state’s requirements. There are processing and wait times, and often you can go back and forth with each state because of missing or incorrect information, which can greatly increase your get-to-market time.  In addition to the application process, there are also unique renewal processes for each state —some are annual, some are every four years. Most states also require that individual license holders complete a certain number of hours of continuing education every renewal period, and the exact number of hours varies by state. To mitigate such a lengthy and complicated process, third parties exist that offer licensing-as-a-service. When you work with a licensing-as-a-service company, you give your information to the company and then they handle the lifecycle of your licenses from applications to ongoing renewals. Not all licensing-as-a-service companies are created equal. Some third parties can actually extend the process by not being clear about what information is required upfront. Ultimately, they can make the process more expensive, cumbersome, and time-consuming, delaying your go-to-market time and defeating their purpose altogether.  When you work with Boost Insurance, on the other hand, we have the experience and expertise to streamline these processes. In addition, it is our goal to get you to market as quickly as possible - that’s the Boost difference. Our in-house licensing experts will collect all your necessary information upfront, process it, and then submit the applications for you, country-wide, saving you a lot of stress and back and forth. Our licensing team knows all of the pitfalls and loopholes in each state. They also know what questions to ask ahead of time, so they can submit licenses and gain approvals quickly. We can get you to market, in as many markets as possible, selling Boost insurance products on our platform in as little as a month.  We will also handle the lifecycle of your licenses, keeping track of your renewals and updating you along the way. And, when you work with Boost, your licenses are not exclusive to Boost products. You can use your licenses for other insurance products as you choose. If you want to learn more about getting your individual or entity insurance licenses through Boost’s licensing-as-a-service, contact us.   Disclaimer: The information set forth herein is intended for informational purposes only and may include links to internet websites maintained by third parties. Boost Insurance Agency, Inc. (“Boost”) assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the content of such third-party websites. Any timelines or requirements included herein are illustrative based on experience and subject to change. Boost cannot guarantee any state review timing.