The Centre for Study of Insurance Operations (CSIO) announced that it has finalized new Application Programming Interface (API) standards which allow systems programming that will enable brokers to quote and bind property and casualty (P&C) business directly in their broker management system (BMS). 

The technology association representing P&C insurers, service providers and brokers says insurers and vendors programming the standard into their systems will enable brokers to quote and bind personal automobile, habitational, individually rated commercial automobile and commercial general liability lines of business directly in their BMS.

The elected working groups formed by the CSIO say the standards release also sets the foundation for future API use case development.

“The programmable schemas for the API standard using JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), as it is the latest, state-of-the-art technology that allows condensed sets of data to move between systems more efficiently than ever before,” they write in a statement announcing the release of the new API standards. “Without an industry standard, brokers must resort to directly entering information into individual insurers’ systems to obtain their quotes, resulting in a quoting process that can take hours.”