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Bâloise Assurances Luxembourg: a profound digital transformation journey leading to APIs

5min Read · 14 Oct 2021

Back in June, Bâloise Assurances Luxembourg published its first API in the LUXHUB Marketplace, enabling financial institutions to integrate mortgage insurance quotes directly within their core banking systems. As a result, the company became the first insurer in Luxembourg to officially enter the era of Open Insurance, convinced by its limitless potential and numerous opportunities.

Xavier Roblin (Head of Corporate Development and International Relations at Bâloise Assurances) was one of the key drivers of the initiative, working hand in hand with our technical and commercial teams here at LUXHUB. We recently sat with the expert to discuss how the group Bâloise in Luxembourg foresees the future of insurance and approaches the concept of Open Insurance.

 

The financial sector has transformed heavily over the past few years, notably through the introduction of new regulation, such as PSD2; the entry of new, digital-first players; and an enhanced focus on user-experience within an increasingly competitive environment. How has the insurance sector been impacted by this digital wave? How did the group Bâloise in Luxembourg (re)act to this trend?

The biggest impact of digitalization can be seen in the way customers behave. Since the introduction of PSD2, the interactions between clients and their banks have changed dramatically. Think of all the neobanks, the current account aggregators, the personal finance robots that have been booming for the past few years, fuelled by direct access to customer bank accounts.

This is just the beginning, and we think it is only a matter of time before the entire insurance industry gets an obligation to comply to a regulation similar to PSD2. That is the reason why we are leveraging our digital expertise (B2B agent & broker tools, retail e-commerce portals and customer or partner app) to repurpose this capacity in a “as-a-service” logic. The goal is to offer our digital infrastructure to B2B partners in a white label format or via an API, which is easier to integrate within a third-party native environment.

 

With this Open Insurance approach, we invite platforms, integrators, (neo)banks, financial service providers and ecosystems in general to test our products in a safe and proven environment

 

I understand that digital is now fully integrated into several of your solutions. Why did you decide to enter the world of Open Insurance and how did you go about taking your first steps in this direction? In the near future, how will Open Insurance enable Bâloise to focus even more on innovation and co-creation?

Open Insurance enables customers and partners to access our products and services in a quick and convenient manner, which is ultimately our main goal here at Bâloise. We want to make the lives of our customers and partners easier, and our strong expertise in digitalization will help us achieve this mission.

When it comes to partnerships, it means that our products and services need to be simplified, but our processes – and their integration within the partners’ systems – need to run smoothly as well. LUXHUB is a recognized leader in the field of Open Finance in Europe. As such, it was a logical step for us to partner with them in order to benefit from their expertise and existing network.

With this Open Insurance approach, we invite platforms, integrators, (neo)banks, financial service providers and ecosystems in general to test our products in a safe and proven environment. If they are convinced that our service can be of added-value to their own customers, they can easily subscribe with us and start integrating it within their own customer-facing environment.

 

Can you tell us more about the first API you have developed – and listed in the LUXHUB Marketplace – and about the related use case? What are the direct benefits for API consumers and eventually for end-users?

The first API that we developed and listed in the LUXHUB Marketplace is a pricing API for our mortgage balance insurance (also called credit protection insurance).

Our mortgage insurance is often sold via partners, and notably via banks. For the moment, when an end customer wants to take out a mortgage in order to buy an apartment or a house, the bank agent has to log into our IT system and offer our product to their clients.

The API listed in the Marketplace enables banks to integrate our pricing directly into their own IT system. Bank agents will have the real-time pricing of our outstanding balance insurance directly embedded in their own systems. Not only will they save time, but they will also drastically improve the placement rates, as the price will be “teased” in their system.

What is important to say, is that banks don’t have to undertake any major IT developments in order to integrate our solution. Thanks to the LUXHUB Marketplace, they can easily connect to our API: this solution is time and cost effective for our partners. And of course, if banks have a customer do-it-yourself interface, they can expose our service directly in the client environment of their choice, integrated within their own brand and corporate design, keeping a full control on the overall UX.

 

What other use cases are you currently exploring in order to fully exploit the power of Open Insurance?

We started by developing the pricing API for our credit insurance in order to simplify the life of our bank partners. The next steps will be to onboard other partners and to develop an API to complete the subscription process of our outstanding balance insurance. We are also thinking of other products to connect via APIs, like household insurance, car insurance or bike insurance, for instance.

 

Can you tell us more about your collaboration with LUXHUB, with regards the creation and listing of the mortgage insurance API in the Marketplace? From your perspective, why is such a platform/collaboration model the way to go to further enable the transformation of the insurance sector?

Collaborating with LUXHUB represents a great opportunity for us. Thanks to their expertise in PSD2, they onboarded 40+ banks that are already connected to their marketplace via APIs. Being listed in their Marketplace as the only insurance company enables us to easily connect to these banks and offer our services via APIs, without requiring extensive previous IT developments from our partners or ourselves.

We are convinced that by enabling banks to embed real-time, tailored mortgage insurance quotes directly into their core banking systems – all in just a few clicks – we will revolutionize the distribution of insurance products in Luxembourg and beyond.

 

Finally, how would you convince other companies in your sector to open up and share their insurance-related data? How will they eventually benefit from the Open Insurance model?

Whether the pressure comes from the clients, the competition or the European Commission Regulation, the clock is ticking. The question is not whether they should embrace the Open Insurance model, but rather when they will decide to do it and enter the API economy.

 

Discover Bâloise’s mortgage insurance API and take full advantage of the opportunities offered by Open Insurance.

Enter the Marketplace

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